by Elizabeth Drembus

As I begin to pull Post-it notes off the walls of Bray School Lab student workspace and wipe clean the glass board, I reflect on the incredible work that William & Mary students accomplished this semester. Likewise, I reflect on their involvement and the evolution of Bray School Stories. I wonder: What did they learn in the process? Did they find the work meaningful? I marvel at what a privilege it is to work with such smart, inquisitive, fun, justice-oriented young people. 

There has been a shift in my work over the past two years. I am now more directly involved in developing projects and mentoring students. Their inclusion in Bray School Stories has further developed this community gathering place that welcomes all who are interested in our work and serves as a place for our students to shine. 

How It Started

In fall 2024, I received an email asking whether the Lab use an intern from the National Institute of American History & Democracy (NIAHD) certificate program. From that simple request, the genealogical research which had been underway for about 18 months expanded to include W&M students not only from the National Institute of American History & Democracy (NIAHD) program, but soon the Cultural Heritage Immersion Program (CHIP), as well as students who were curious about the scholars who attended the Williamsburg Bray School and the search for their descendants.

Nylah Jordan, ‘25 was our first genealogy intern. With no prior genealogical research experience but a willing and enthusiastic heart, she dove into the work. Along the way, she learned to read eighteenth-century cursive handwriting. Under my mentorship, Nylah pulled all my research on the Ashby children and on the various Ashby descendants to create a complete timeline of all the records we had for the Ashby family. We could then see the gaps that remain and which direct our research. In the process, Nylah met and talked with Ashby family members which brought the research to life as she shared findings with living descendants. 

Creating Projects in the Lab

The Lab seeks to ask questions and search for answers. One of the questions that comes up when people hear the story of Isaac Bee, is what happened after he sought his freedom in 1793? This academic year we sought to answer that question. By enlisting multiple students, we tried several avenues to tackle this question under the What Happened to Isaac Bee Project.

Likewise, when Descendant Community members came to us with a request to unravel the connections between themselves and the men, women and children who fled Virginia and Maryland with the Black Loyalists, we created the Black Loyalists Roots in VA and MD Project. Using genealogical research and family history records, Lab students are combing the archives for information and connections. 

Isn’t genealogy something older people do? 

Not so with the students who have come into the Lab. I have been incredibly fortunate to work with Tyler Lewis, ‘26 and Keaton Drennan, ‘26. Both Tyler and Keaton have researched their families’ histories and brought their interest in genealogy to the Bray School Lab.

 How do the students handle it when they can’t complete the task, i.e. find the descendants in a semester’s time?

This type of research takes time, especially when you are looking for people who were intentionally left out of many records. This is the nature of genealogical research. Not everything can be found, even with AI. It makes it all the more exciting when Keaton knocks on my door, laptop in hand, and whispers in a reverent tone, “I think I found something!”

Bray School Stories Evolves

At a recent Descendant Community event we asked, “What Bray School Lab events have you participated in and enjoyed?” Imagine my surprise when someone replied that Bray School Stories was one of her top three Lab activities.

What started as a way of sharing research findings and seeking research recommendations, has fostered community in a way we could not have envisioned. Participants include Descendant Community members, W&M staff, faculty, and alumni, genealogists and historians, museum curators and educators, K-12 teachers, and people simply curious about the Williamsburg Bray School story. 

Going beyond the genealogical research, we explore such topics as 1) the legacy of Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation and connection to Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone; 2) archaeological discoveries from the original site of the Williamsburg Bray School; and, 3) lessons in taking time to heal as we share hard history and the legacies of slavery from the Bray School.

In 2025, Lab students began sharing their work at Bray School Stories. We strive to be transparent about who is doing the work, so it was a natural addition that students conducting genealogical research present their findings at Bray School Stories. They were best situated to talk about the records, explain how they went about finding them, share their struggles, and answer questions from a supportive audience. And what a warm welcome they received!

Conclusion

This May we celebrated Tyler and Keaton’s graduation from W&M and had a chance to check in with Nylah. Both Tyler and Nylah plan to continue Williamsburg Bray School research in their graduate work. Keaton plans to be a genealogist and use those skills in her public history work. Sharpe Scholar Evan Trost examined the Bray School through an International Relations lens; this summer Sharpe Scholar Bailey Kim continues her research into “Bray @ Play” and is our featured speaker at Bray School Stories in July. Starting in September, we look forward to welcoming Ashiya Lawrence, Kaiya Downs, Emily Muscolina, Angela Gyawali, and Cadence Hodge back to the Lab. Their insights, enthusiasm, and interests are infectious. I look forward to guiding them and showcasing their work on future sessions of Bray School Stories. 

Elizabeth Drembus is the genealogist for the Bray School Lab. She is also the creator and host of Bray School Stories, which, to date, has 25 episodes, averages 30 to 40 real-time viewers per episode, and has 2,093 views on YouTube. Recordings of the sessions can be found by visiting the William & Mary Bray School Lab YouTube channel.   

by Keaton Drennan

When I began volunteering with the William & Mary Bray School Lab at the start of my senior year, I set out to research Johanna (also Joanna) and Clara Bee, former Williamsburg Bray School students, and other members of the Bee family. The Lab had already gathered some substantial information on Isaac Bee, establishing his immediate whereabouts and potential descendants after his time at the Bray School. However, I was drawn to the Bee sisters, especially given the scant information available about them. I wanted to answer some lingering questions: What happened to Joanna and Clara Bee after their time at Williamsburg Bray School? What happened to their sisters, Polly and Lydia Bee? I prepared for a difficult task, aware that my research would be stunted by the effects of historical erasure and the slow, gradual progress of digitization.

My research journey started with the 1782-1900 inventory of personal property tax records for Williamsburg, Virginia. I transcribed the tax documents for the years 1783, 1784, and 1786. From the transcriptions, I concluded that Joanna, Clara, and Lydia were in John Blair’s household in Williamsburg in 1783; Lydia and Joanna remained in John Blair’s household in 1784; and Lydia, Joanna, and a person named “Hanny” (potentially Hannah Bee) were recorded in John Blair’s household in 1786. However, there is a working theory from prior research that Hannah Bee and Joanna Bee may actually be the same person.

Mutual Assurance Society   

After months of transcribing tax lists and digging through vital records and the Library of Virginia’s Virginia Untold collections, I finally encountered a research breakthrough. I entered the term “Polly Bee” in a general search through the Library of Virginia, which led me to a digitized collection of the Mutual Assurance Society of Virginia policies for Henrico County and Richmond City. The policies provide the locations of insured properties, the owners and occupants of said properties, as well as the valuations and building materials of each property. For those interested in genealogy research, architectural history, or learning more about Richmond City in general, I highly recommend consulting LVA’s Mutual Assurance Society records. 

Polly Bee’s Journey: The Bees and Richmond City 

Polly and Lydia Bee’s journey in Richmond began as early as 1798, with Lydia Bee residing at the property of Joseph Gallego, a flour mill owner and Spanish merchant. The sisters were residents on Gallego’s property in 1800, most likely living at the intersection of Cary and Main Streets, near the Bell Tavern, as informed by the Mutual Assurance Society Policies for Richmond City and Henrico County, 1796-1867. 

Polly and Lydia were emancipated in 1802 by James Miller, a London merchant, while they were living in Richmond. After gaining their freedom, Polly and Lydia became part of the expanding free population in this city, and Polly herself would later play a role in helping others pursue their freedom as in the 1805/1806 emancipation of Eliza Ellis.

Mutual Assurance Society policies tell us that Polly continued to live in Richmond City following her emancipation. Polly Bee and her children William Bee, Elizabeth Bee, and Miller Bee— who take the surname “Bowler” in some records—owned property in the city from 1810 to 1829 as the “heirs of Richard Bowler.” There is uncertainty concerning the relationship between Polly and Richard Bowler; whether they were romantically involved or if their relationship was only of a legal nature is not conclusive. However, shortly after Richard Bowler’s death sometime between 1805 and 1810, Polly Bowler and her children inherited his property in the city. The Virginia Argus in October 1810 recorded that she petitioned the General Assembly for the right to manage the property she inherited for her and her children:

“[It’s] hereby given, that I intend to petition on the next General Assembly of Virginia, for leave to dispose of some real property in the city of Richmond, devised by the late Mr. Richard Bowler [for] myself and children, for the purpose of vesting the money arising therefrom in other real property in said city. Mary Bee.”

At the time of the petition, William, Elizabeth, and Miller Bee owned property, which was formerly Richard Bowler’s, on Main Street near Bell Tavern. After the initial petition, Polly Bee continued to defend her and her children’s property rights. A newspaper article published in The Enquirer in January of 1813 details a court case involving the Bees as defendants against John T. Bowler and William T. Bowler, presumably over the inheritance of Richard Bowler’s estate.

Reflection

My time with the Bee sisters did not end with the property petition or the Mutual Assurance Society papers. Newspaper clippings, commonwealth cause papers, registers, and personal property tax lists for Richmond City would provide many more insights into the Bees’ lives up until the 1830s. As I conclude my final year at William & Mary, I would like to express my gratitude to the Bray School Lab staff for the opportunity to be a part of a meaningful project and to express my hopes that future Student Thought Partners with the Lab will continue the research journey into the Bee family. 

Keaton Drennan ’26, a senior at William & Mary, is double majoring in government and history. She has previous genealogy research experience during which she traced the descendants of individuals enslaved at Menokin in the 19th century. After graduating this spring, she plans to pursue opportunities in public history before applying to graduate programs in history.

by Evan Trost

International politics often seems destined for the broad global stage, exercised by great country powers utilizing a variety of means. However, the ways of internationality can also happen right in our own backyards; or in my case, within the nation’s largest recreation of revolutionary 18th-century America. 

As an International Relations major coming into the William & Mary Bray School Lab, I was not sure how I would be able to contribute to a quintessentially historical topic. Although IR frequently incorporates historical context across many societal and political lenses, my true interests reside in modern events and what is happening as I wake up each morning. 

However, I was reminded of the first time I had visited the Bray School building. Assigned to tour Colonial Williamsburg for my freshman seminar COLL 100 class, the Bray School was one of the recommended sites given by my professor. Stepping inside, I felt the narrowness of the building; an old staircase instantly greeted me on my right, and a tiny classroom peeked out from the left. The interpreter assigned to help us ushered us to the left, and soon I came face to face with a foreign room. Benches lined the walls, while a fireplace, a chair, and a desk full of tiny books were the room’s focal points.

As our friendly interpreter showed us possible evidence of what life might have looked like for students, I was taken aback by the shape of the room; what was called a classroom looked nothing like the room I had just been in for my Introduction to Comparative Politics class. I began thinking more and more about the differences between my student life and a Bray School pupil’s: How early did they have to arrive in the morning to go to class? What were they taught? Who determined what they were taught? What was the teacher like?

The answer to my first question was given instantly: 6am in the summer, and 7am in the winter, every day. However, as for the other questions, I became ever so curious about the intersection of an enslaved child’s life, here in Williamsburg, Virginia, and how it related to a wider, transactional Bray School system run nearly 2000 miles away in England. My interest in internationality soon looked a lot smaller than the stages of the United Nations in New York; perhaps I would be able to explore the world from the benches of a historical classroom. 

Much of my experience with the Bray School lab involved researching and understanding The Child’s First Book, the entry point to literacy for many Bray School students. The book taught the simplest of elements, starting with mere syllables and building up to words and short sentences. However, reading through the short text for the first time, the book’s goals became clear: much of its content was designed to instill a sense of religious obedience within the children reading it. As I looked across the pages, I saw a gradual increase in what the book told children to do, including to obey their enslavers, and praise G-d as king. 

Considering much of a child’s language abilities are created within the first eight years of their life, reading religious and pious commandments continuously crafted an obvious venue for the Bray School to shape enslaved children into future obedient and religious servants. 

Much of the curriculum had ties back to the funders of the school, the Associates of the Late Dr. Bray. The Associates were an Anglican philanthropic group founded in the early 18th century with clear cut goals to promote Christianity and moral reform among enslaved people in Britain’s colonies. Believing slavery was compatible with Christianity, they did not seek social or political liberation in promoting education; rather, they sought to shape Black literacy in ways that served racial and imperial hierarchies. 

According to the Associates, teaching enslaved people to read Christian scriptures would make them more obedient to their enslavers, as well as more accepting of their place in society. Thus such goals reiterated the importance of The Child’s First Book; given early to youth, it served as a tool through which the Associates’ ideology was delivered.

One of the most interesting parts of the Associates, however, was their operations via the means of internationality. The group operated from London, and as a result, had to rely on local clergy, colonial leaders, donors, and the Bray School’s teachers. Although the Associates sent money from far away, providing the materials for the classroom to function, much of the school’s ability to work came very locally. To make up for such means, the book served as a means of reemphasizing the Associates’ agenda amid long distance barriers. 

For me, studying the Associates helped me understand the broader network of the Bray School, an otherwise seemingly local establishment sitting in a small, colonial town. Despite the outward appearance of the Bray School promoting Black literacy, looking beyond the surface level showed me a complex structure functioning on both moral and social levels. As an IR major, the control of the Associates reminded me of a common international politics term: soft power. In opposition to hard power, which involves military means, soft power utilizes ideology and culture to engineer perspectives and the world order. With the case of both the Bray School and the Associates, we see the British not using armies and naval abilities to maintain stability, but rather classrooms and scripture readings. Such anecdotes only further reinforce the goals of soft power, which include reinforcing hierarchy to legitimize a higher up authority. 

Studying and analyzing the Bray School has deepened my understanding of history across a wide array of disciplines. From the goals of the Associates to the scriptures of The Child’s First Book, much of what I have been able to learn has revealed deep connections between education, religion, power, and hierarchical structures. Although my time with the Bray School Lab has only lasted a semester, I plan to take with me the ideas and concepts I have learned and carry them into both my studies in International Relations as well as my future personal and career pursuits. 

Evan Trost ’29 is a freshman at William & Mary majoring in International Relations and Russian & Eastern European Studies. Originally from Baltimore, he enjoys playing piano and exercising at the gym in his free time. He joined the Bray School Lab this semester as a Sharpe Scholar.

By Bailey Kim

In January of 2026, I began research into the entertainment and play methods of the children who attended the Williamsburg Bray School between 1760 and 1774. It began with light research on the overall play habits of African Americans, both enslaved and free, which was then applied to the students of the Bray School, where possible. The school, where possibly a few hundred students attended, though only 86 names are known, taught boys and girls from ages 3 to 10 to spell and read religious content like the Bible and Anglican catechism. While created to perpetuate the institution of slavery, it also likely became a place where children could play and entertain each other in ways they may not have at their residences.

As someone who has always been interested in media and entertainment, I was naturally drawn to the topic of play. I have wished for the opportunity to explore the concept of entertainment as something simultaneously necessary yet frivolous. Humans have played for as long as we have existed, and yet, little academic research has been written about it compared to other human activities. Is this because fun was not deemed important? Was it considered a luxury only afforded to those who could enjoy it fully? How did it evolve to what we see as entertainment today?

Upon entering William & Mary in all its colonial glory, I began to wonder what entertainment may have been like at a time when contemporary devices and games did not exist. When thinking about times so far in the past, it is easy to view the people as passive bodies to the historical events and legacy left behind. We tend to strip the individual, save for the special few, and reduce people to products of their time period. However, we should not forget that they were humans in the same way we still are today. Colonial Virginians laughed, adventured, and acted mischievously. They invented new forms of expression, idolized mentors and adults, and worked. Humans have done the same things in different ways for centuries.

When it comes to both enslaved and free Black children in history, we know very little compared to their White counterparts. This is especially true from the 1760s to 1770s, when America was still young and working to grow its own identity as a republic. Most records, stories, and traditions were not dedicated to them. Much of what we know now is a result of endless digging through archives, lots of speculation, and recollections of oral histories and traditions passed from generation to generation. While it is easy to assume that Black children during this time did not have the opportunity to play, we also have to remember what children are like. They find ways to entertain and experiment in various ways, regardless of social convention.

Partnering with the Bray School Lab has allowed me to look at something from a perspective I had not even considered. For a long time, history was simply two-dimensional in viewpoint. There were always definite sides to conflict, relationships, and societies. I had never put much thought into the daily lives or experiences of children from the past. However, taking a W&M course in children’s history, along with my research conducted with the Bray School Lab, has opened my eyes to a very unique perspective that I believe everyone should consider at least once in their study of history.

Some theories I found especially interesting are those questioning how African American children turned typical everyday tasks into forms of play or enjoyment. Whether that be circumventing simple jobs into a competition or simply talking while performing them, it is interesting to investigate and speculate on the different ways children possibly entertained themselves without explicitly doing so. Adam and Fanny, two children owned by William & Mary, as well as Charlotte, who was owned by the institution’s president, likely walked to the Bray School together and aided each other with their reading. This is based on accounts from William & Mary Faculty Minute Books from 1729 to1784 in the Special Collections Research Center. Despite its distinct academic nature, could this be seen as play? Did these times give space for them to simply be children?

Of course there is a lot of speculation involved in the research. Likely, we may never know exactly how the children who attended the Bray School—or other Black children who lived during this time period—spent their “free time.” Their inherent state as African Americans in colonial America restricted their ability to behave with the same type of innocence and curiosity as we know children do today. They were forced to grow and take on adult responsibilities and realities faster than any child should. There were many inherent contradictions with their status that they were forced to comprehend from an age where many today do not even understand the concept of race. Perhaps things we may never consider play were enjoyable to them, or perhaps they invented ways of play that were known only to themselves.

While the results of this research may never yield concrete answers, the questions asked through this project are still worthy of consideration. It both humanizes and puts into perspective these children as similar in basic ways to the children of today. Play, despite its important role in development and education, is often overlooked as an important aspect of history. Play and entertainment remain a large part of our culture today, and it is compelling to explore how that has developed since the 18th century.

Bailey Kim ‘29 is a William & Mary freshman planning on majoring in Public Policy with a minor in Film & Media Studies. She intends to attend law school to pursue intellectual property law and hopes to work as an entertainment lawyer. Bailey is continuing her research on the play and entertainment habits of Bray School students throughout the summer under the Sharpe Action Research Internship.

by Terry L. Meyers

When I started working on unravelling mysteries about the Bray School years ago, I was puzzled as to why, in 1760, Benjamin Franklin would recommend to his fellow Associates of Dr. Bray in London that they site a school in Williamsburg, Virginia. No place in the Thirteen Colonies could have been more enmeshed in chattel slavery or more expected to resist any education for Black children—even religious education.

But it turned out that in visiting Williamsburg in 1756 and receiving William & Mary’s first honorary degree, Franklin must have discovered a long institutional openness to religious education for Black adults and children. And in recommending that the president of the College be one of the school overseers, Franklin was protecting the soon-to-be school from its skeptics.

It is worth recalling that the Anglican church had long been concerned for the souls of the “heathens” in the New World, namely Native American and African-descended people. William & Mary’s Royal Charter of 1693 led to the early establishment of the Brafferton School.  

And at least some Black people were eager for instruction in the tenets of Christianity, for conversion from what one Associates’ Account (1768) deemed the “Darkness of Heathenism and Brutality.” In 1723 an enslaved man—or enslaved woman—in Virginia (possibly with co-authors) addressed an appeal to the new Bishop of London, Edmund Gibson; he asked that the Bishop, “Releese us out of this Cruell Bondegg” and provide religious schooling for their children:

[A]nd Sir wee your humble perticners do humblly beg the favour of your Lord Ship that your honour will grant and Settell one thing upon us which is that our childarn may be broatt up in the way of the Christtian faith and our desire is that they may be Larnd the Lords prayer the creed and the ten com-mandements and that they may appeare Every Lord’s day att Church before the Curatt to bee Exammond for our desire is that godllines Shoulld abbound amongs us and wee desire that our Childarn be putt to Scool and and Larnd to Reed through the Bybell.

Even in early days at William & Mary, its president, James Blair, proposed a law reducing taxes on enslavers who brought their enslaved children to Christianity. He wrote the Bishop of London in 1724 that as Rector of Bruton Parish Church he encouraged “the baptizing & catechizing of such of them [the enslaved] as understand English.”

And in about 1735, a British portrait painter, Charles Bridges, arrived in Williamsburg with a letter of introduction from Gibson to Blair. (Bridges painted the portrait of Blair in the Wren Great Hall). Bridges was a member of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and found already developing in Williamsburg ideas for a school for the religious education of Blacks, a proposal forwarded to the Bishop “in late 1735.” One scholar, Graham Hood, says that “Bridges also explored with Blair and Gibson the possibility of establishing a charity to teach Christianity to the colony’s African Americans.” 

Another scholar, Joan Louise Rezner, specified that the “the proposal called for a full time catechist who would ‘be always upon the Spot at reasonable hours as to attend those that come to be Instructed at that Time, [when] they can be spared, and to make it his whole business to teach Negroes and no others.’” Neither Blair nor Gibson found a way to support such instruction financially and despite a further appeal to the Bishop in 1738, Bridges returned to England without the school’s coming into being.

Nevertheless, some schools for religious instruction did exist for Blacks—three of them, for example, possibly overseen by William Dawson in his capacity (beyond being president of William & Mary, 1743-1752) as parish priest. Dawson made a brief, generalized reference to such schools in a letter, but this begs more research.

When Blair died in 1743, he was replaced as president by the Board of Visitors with Dawson, but Dawson needed the Bishop’s appointment to succeed Blair as Commissary. One of Dawson’s supporters wrote the Bishop that Dawson was eager to cooperate with the Bishop’s “Endeaavors for the Instruction of the Negroes here in the principles of Christianity”: “he is labouring … to get a School set up here for that purpose.” Just a few years earlier, in 1740, Dawson had sought funding from the Bishop for “a collection of religious books … for the benefit of the Negroes & the Poor of this Colony.” Dawson’s estate was billed by Elizabeth Wyatt for “schooling your Negro Jenny for one year.”

Dawson taught at least one course at the College during one Lent “to near 40 white Servants, Indians, and Negroes, who constantly attended.” And soon after becoming president of the College, he had written to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge to ask for copies of regulations “proper to be observed by masters and mistresses of Charity Schools … many of which, with some little alteration, will suit a Negro-School in our metropolis, when we shall have the pleasure of seeing one established. The establishment of others in the country will depend on our success in this place.”

A few years after William Dawson died in 1752, his brother, Thomas, became president (1755-1760), and Thomas, too, supported Black religious education. Both had been instrumental in raising funds locally for a charity school in Maryland overseen by a missionary to the enslaved, Thomas Bacon. And in 1754, Dawson wrote the Bishop of London urging a convention of Virginia clergy where “Schools for the educating of poor Children, and negroes might be recommended and encouraged.”

This then is the history of the interest in Black religious education at William & Mary that Franklin would have encountered in 1756 and that, I think, encouraged him to suggest an affiliation between the College and the school. It might be claimed (with asterisks, caveats, and a sense of irony) that William & Mary was the first college or university in America, possibly anywhere, to concern itself with Black education.

Terry L. Meyers, PhD, retired from William & Mary as Chancellor Professor, Emeritus, of English after 46 years of teaching.  He was active with the Williamsburg Historical Records Association, which he served as president, and he was involved with the development of The Lemon Project at William & Mary. His research and unwavering curiosity about the Williamsburg Bray School were critical factors in the search that led to the ultimate rediscovery of the original tenement building in 2020. A family genealogist has recently suggested he is possibly descended from Leanna Nichols Spiller, a sister of Robert Carter Nicholas.

by Terry L. Meyers

In 2013, I suggested in an essay in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, “Thinking about Slavery at the College of William and Mary,” that the Williamsburg Bray School might have inspired a possible second school for Black children also to be overseen by William & Mary.  I was wrong.

But the question is still interesting because it casts some light on local racial matters not too far removed from the years the Bray School existed (1760-1774). And there is a faint echo from the Bray School.

When William Ludwell Lee (1775-1803) freed his enslaved persons, by the terms of his will, I suspect he did so at least in part under the influence of Bishop James Madison, the president of William & Mary. Madison was also the first bishop of the Episcopal Church in Virginia and cousin to the United States’ fourth president, James Madison. Bishop Madison had overseen a skepticism about slavery in the curriculum for some time, but neither he nor the College actually freed those they enslaved.

Those whom Lee had enslaved that were under eighteen were sent to be educated in a state north of the Potomac River and in accordance “with their capabilities.” 

And when he specified in his will that a local “free School” be established “solely for the benefit of such persons whose indigent situation forbids their acquiring even the rudiments of an education,” I thought he must be thinking of Black children. I was encouraged in that thinking when he specified that the “American language” be taught to the pupils. I assumed Black children might be speaking a patois derived in part from their parents’ African origins, as the Atlantic slave trade was still wide open and editions of the Virginia Gazette regularly reported the arrivals of ships carrying Africans for sale.    

And a final factor was Lee’s siting the school “in the centre of James City County,” as the boundaries were drawn in 1802. That location was at the center of a free Black community at what we know today as Freedom Park, located at the intersection of Longhill and Centerville Roads.

That annual payments from a gift of land were to be made to William & Mary to oversee the school, for its “use and benefit,” made sense to me since I thought (and still think) that would reflect the College’s earlier role (at least initially) in its presidents’ being overseers of an earlier school, the Bray School.

But in revisiting the question I would make several corrections, not the least of which is my confusing Lee a bit later in the piece with his father, William Lee (1739-1795), as his father had corresponded with Madison about emancipating his own enslaved persons. Mainly, I would back away from the link I made between the school and Black students. I think now that Lee had dealt with the question of education for those he had enslaved in the earlier paragraphs of his will which focused on his settlement of them in Baltimore and the education to be offered to those under eighteen. I think he then shifted his attention to the indigent students in James City County. That he did not specify them as being Black students suggests to me now that they were white. I’m still puzzled about siting the school where he did, at the site of the free Black community, but suppose now that the issue was centrality and accessibility to all students.

And I remain puzzled too about the teaching of American.  I’m now inclined to think that the poorest of white children might just have spoken in slovenly ways to be corrected by instruction. Or perhaps, the reference to “American” was a means of signifying an approach or relationship to language that was distinctly American as opposed to British in the early years of the Republic.

Finally, Lee’s attention to democracy seems important here since it is unlikely he would have conceived of Blacks having a role in government. In his will—available at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s Rockefeller Library—Lee writes that he is “convinced of the importance of education and of the advantages which may be derived from a general diffusal of useful information among the mass of society in Government depending for their support on popular opinion.” Few if any whites of the time conceived of African Americans  ever having a role in governance.

What became of the school?  It never came into being. As Earl Gregg Swem documented in his 1959 William & Mary Quarterly article, “The Lee Free School and the College of William and Mary,” the College did make some early efforts towards starting the school, but by 1837 the courts had deemed that William & Mary was not properly eligible to be a trustee of such a school.

It bears stating, however, that the Williamsburg Bray School did inspire the work of another Bray school: Fredericksburg. Fredericksburg was recommended as a likely location for another Bray Associates school as it was on the Rappahannock River and a reasonable distance from Williamsburg. Of greater note is the fact Williamsburg Bray School trustee, Robert Carter Nicholas, shared the Williamsburg rules with Fredericksburg trustee, Fielding Lewis, who quickly adopted them, owing to the rules being “so well calculated for the well Government of [the school].”

So the Williamsburg Bray School did have a daughter school—just not the one I thought it had. 

Terry L. Meyers, PhD, retired from William & Mary as Chancellor Professor, Emeritus, of English after 46 years of teaching.  He was active with the Williamsburg Historical Records Association, which he served as president, and he was involved with the development of The Lemon Project at William & Mary. His research and unwavering curiosity about the Williamsburg Bray School were critical factors in the search that led to the ultimate rediscovery of the original tenement building in 2020. A family genealogist has recently suggested he is possibly descended from Leanna Nichols Spiller, a sister of long-serving Bray School Trustee, Robert Carter Nicholas.

As a history major hoping to go into museums and preservation after school, I was excited to engage with the historic sites surrounding William & Mary’s campus. During my first semester, I found that the school does a phenomenal job of linking itself to local history. My first encounter with the Williamsburg Bray School was through a sociology course on twentieth-century Black Williamsburg, during which I was tasked with evaluating Colonial Williamsburg’s interpretations of various Black history sites. I found my tour of the Bray School fascinating, and was ecstatic when I was given the opportunity to become a student thought partner with the Bray School Lab.

I began interning at the Bray School Lab during the spring semester of my freshman year. At the time, I was a member of the Sharpe Community Scholars program’s Action Research Pathways, which connects students’ research interests with opportunities in the Williamsburg community. During their spring semester, Sharpe Scholars are placed into semester-long internships where they can put their research ideas and interests into action. Placement in each of the internship programs was interest-based, and my interest in the Bray School had already been piqued by my sociology course the semester before.

When I arrived at the Bray School Lab, I began working on the Mapping the Literacy of Enslaved Virginians project with a group of students, a few of which were also connected to the Lab through the Sharpe Scholars program. The project’s goal was to compile as much primary evidence of enslaved literacy in Virginia as possible, then map those instances onto an interactive map for the public to explore. I was struck by how many instances of enslaved literacy I found early on in my research — I had seriously underestimated how common it was.

To find the names and literacy levels of many enslaved Virginians, I pored over fugitive slave ads, oral history transcripts, and teachers’ journals. Fugitive slave ads were one of my largest sources of information on enslaved literacy. They often included runaways’ education because enslavers were afraid of enslaved people reading the notices and making plans to go somewhere far away or forging freedom papers and passing as free. I scanned hundreds of ads in the Geography of Slavery in Virginia database for keywords like “read” and “write” and recorded the information in the Bray School Lab’s mapping project database.

In addition to reading and writing, I kept track of other forms of education and the skills enslaved Virginians had, such as printing or sewing. While the project focused on literacy, the Lab did not want to discount the many other important forms of education that enslaved Virginians possessed. I also kept track of enslaved Virginians’ sources of education. Some learned from their enslavers’ children as they learned to read in school, while others learned from night schools, reading the Bible, or friends and family members who were already literate.

In the process of reading through A North Side View of Slavery, edited by Benjamin Drew, one of the sources I used to get transcribed oral histories about enslaved literacy, I came across many remarkable stories. One man that Drew interviewed had learned to read and write and used these abilities to self-manumit by traveling from Virginia to Canada. By reading a message he’d been sent to deliver to another enslaver, he learned that his enslaver planned to sell him elsewhere. He escaped slavery by copying his enslaver’s signature and writing himself free passes until he made it to Queen’s Bush, Canada.

Enslaved literacy and education has often been overlooked in historical research, but the transcribed oral histories I read made it clear that these were crucial sources of power and agency for enslaved Virginians. There were many instances, like the one mentioned above, in which enslaved people were able to use information gained through their literacy to escape slavery, evade capture after running away, prevent themselves from being separated from their loved ones, or reunite themselves with family that had already been taken from them. That so many fugitive slave ads contained information about enslaved people’s literacy is a testament to how powerful that literacy was. Literacy was a symbol of freedom, and therefore a major threat to enslavers’ authority and methods of control.

Though I was only required to stay with the Bray School Lab for a semester as a Sharpe Scholar, the Mapping the Literacy of Enslaved Virginians project was much bigger in scope and historical significance than one semester of work. At the end of my freshman year, I made the decision to continue working with the Bray School Lab even after I left the Sharpe Scholars program. I am excited to help continue research for the project and see the final product. Hopefully, the mapping project will illustrate the significance of enslaved literacy and the nuances of enslaved Virginians’ experiences and expressions of agency.

Cadence Hodge ‘28 is a William & Mary sophomore double majoring in history and public health. She is also working towards a NIAHD certification in Public History and Material Culture. Cadence intends to pursue museum studies or public history in graduate school and hopes to be a part of making marginalized histories more accessible to the public.

by Emily Muscolina

Conducting first-hand research on the Williamsburg Bray School is an opportunity unique to William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg, and vital to the educational missions of both institutions. Although I have only been volunteering at the W&M Bray School Lab for roughly a year, my awareness of it began much earlier.

I first learned about the Williamsburg Bray School in the summer of 2022. That summer, I was a high school student in the National Institute of American History & Democracy (NIAHD) Pre-College Program in American History. Our role as students gave us the privilege of literally seeing research unfold.

My class visited the Bray-Digges House, still located at that time on William & Mary’s campus. This building, which had been confirmed as the original Bray school two summers before, was fenced off near an empty lot. To the passerby, it resembled an abandoned building. I remember the excitement I felt upon approaching it. I couldn’t believe that I was experiencing historical discovery firsthand, and for such an important topic. The building was gutted inside, its frame and brick openly exposed. It felt adventurous to walk up the rickety stairs in anticipation of finding the architectural miracle—a couple of tiny fingerprints in the brick—creating an enduring human connection between the 21^st century and the 18^th-century hands who shaped the building’s history.

Not so far down the street was the original site of the school. Here, discoveries were also being made in archaeology. Our class crammed into the small yard of William & Mary’s Brown Hall (now Gates Hall), where square holes were dug into the dirt. Over the years since then, this dirt has continued to reveal secrets that had been buried for over 250 years, giving us insight into the real lives of the children who attended the school and others who lived on the site many years after.

The magnitude of the historical implications that the Bray School offers stuck with me, convincing me to join the Bray School Lab in early 2025. The Williamsburg Bray School Initiative is a fully-fledged partnership of discovery between William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg, and is, at its heart, a community project. This project brings together architectural historians, archaeologists, Bray School descendants, academic and public historians, college students, K-12 teachers, and visitors, among many, many others. Here, history is literally made for everyone.

~

An interesting thought occurred to me a year ago: What percentage of the Black population was literate in the Early Republic and antebellum United States? The answer to this question would have many implications. Considering the importance of the printing press in early America, literacy gave individuals more agency of their own. Literacy enabled people to make sense of the world around them and to act accordingly. Especially during the Age of Revolution, new ideas of human rights were circulated across the Atlantic World through the written word. People involved in this literature-fueled discussion became part of the conversation of liberty, thus politicizing literacy and education. Politically, education is fundamental to securing and maintaining freedom. Literacy is one of these pathways to freedom, making it a key tool to resist slavery.

When I began volunteering, I was invited to work on the Lab’s new project to map the literacy of enslaved Virginians. I was fortunate that the task I was assigned would help to answer my question. However, I was surprised to learn that there had not been more research conducted on the topic of early African American literacy. Because literacy is a pathway to freedom, I expected it to be more researched. The Bray School gave me an opportunity to give attention to an important topic as well as conduct quantitative and qualitative research on a question I am curious about.

The Bray School Lab’s current research on literacy consists of sifting through collections that may have relevant information. The collections vary in type and format. Personally, I have read the WPA Virginia Slave Narratives and portions of the Virginia Gazette database. Currently, I am sorting through the 1869 book Education of the Negro: History of Schools for the Colored Populations. This source is particularly interesting because of its publication date soon after the ratification of the 13^th Amendment, as well as its length of nearly 300 pages. A lot of data can be found in this source, but I have been finding it helpful to cross-reference with more up-to-date scholarly sources to confirm literacy.

There are currently 175 student-generated entries concerning enslaved Virginians in the 18^th and 19^th century that the Lab is now vetting. Many reports of literacy come from runaway ads. Besides those ads, there are a fair number of self-reports made through collected oral histories and slave narratives. These reports have a common denominator: they are collected by white people. Knowing who is telling the story signals to us the historical limitations of our research. In this case, education differentiates literate black people in white perspectives since black education directly challenged white supremacy in early America due to the potential freedoms it offered.

The Bray School Lab’s current literacy mapping project is essential to understanding the degrees of freedom in Virginia. I am excited to see the results of the project so that we can better understand for whom and how liberty could be used in a time of extreme oppression.

Emily Muscolina ’28 is a William & Mary sophomore majoring in history. She has a concentration in Early American history with a goal to continue her studies in graduate school. Emily is currently involved in NIAHD’s public history program and is honing her research and teaching skills to share complex histories.

by Juanita Graham

Since I graduated from William  & Mary, a lot of information has been brought forth, via the college and Colonial Williamsburg, that pertains to the lives of persons of color. I appreciate the effort that has gone into expanding the general population’s knowledge about the often-overlooked people who worked and lived in the Williamsburg area.

As a person of color with a love for genealogy, I enjoy making connections between the past and the present, in order to bring enlightenment to the future. As a word artist, I also enjoy pulling words together to tell a story of those connections. After hearing Dr. Maureen Elgersman Lee present, “The Williamsburg Bray School and Its Scholars, 1760-1774,” on April 21,2025, my two joys of genealogy and writing collided. The result of the collision was a poem centered around the findings that were elaborated on during her engaging presentation. I entitled it, “My Musings of a Grown-up Bray School Scholar.”

The talk she gave stirred up a myriad of feelings, thoughts and questions for me, and as happens so often, my expression of all of those things came out in a poem.  It reflects my feelings, thoughts and questions … spoken as the potential musings of a grown-up Bray School Scholar.  In my imagination, I heard an adult Bray School Scholar speaking my thoughts. I heard my questions being asked and my feelings being expressed in the voice of a grown-up Hannah, George, Isaac Bee, Phoebe, Dolly, Edmund or Nancy. (These are just a few of the names of students that are recorded.)  I don’t know for certain if they would have wanted to know all of the same things because I recognize my thoughts and questions have the influence of me being a Gen X’er, but I’d like to believe that perhaps they shared at least one of my musings.

My Musings of a Grown-Up Bray School Scholar
Juanita Graham – April 25, 2025

How I was viewed I came to learn,
Was based on who was looking and why.
The varied perspectives of how I was seen,
Changed with the mind that was behind the eye.

Pupil …
Child …
Chattel …
Experiment … so some tended to think.

Investment …
Resilience …
A soul and an ancestor … 
With both a divine and genetic link.

As a pupil I was expected to learn,
Then to share what I knew.
But I was not expected to use my knowledge,
To elevate my station, or to expand my reasoning as I grew.

I was to study my letters
So, I could learn to read the prayers.
So that my soul could be saved, 
And I could gain freedom … once I climbed the heavenly stairs.

Now, I was told I would stay enslaved,
My freedom wouldn’t be on this side.
Hence, I wasn’t to get no ideas about breaking free,
Because they would surely have my hide.

For you see, I was also considered to be chattel ...
Isn’t that strange ... to be "a possession" with a soul?
A soul worth saving, that was in a body not worth freeing - 
Liberation wasn’t the goal.

Which made me wonder if teaching us about the Lord,
Was really about fulfilling a Christian obligation.
Or was it to indoctrinate and to foster dependency and gratitude,
Thus, intensifying the process of subjugation.
 
You know, I was also puzzled and would like to ask …
Why didn’t the spiritual messages apply to you too?
Because you definitely did unto me,
What I know you would not have allowed to be done unto you.

That's not to say the religious teaching
Didn't help in some valuable ways.
It helped give me strength to make it through. 
It also helped me keep calm - reminding me ... God repays.

Now, don’t get me wrong,
There were some kind and compassionate people involved,
Who didn’t see me as a school experiment … 
Or just as a return on investment issue to be resolved.
 
However, regardless of whether I was seen as a person … or not,
I rejected the contrived idea that my natural ordained condition was that of a slave.
I have always been a person with core-deep resiliency, 
Who will have a legacy that will live long after I am buried in my grave.

I don’t know them, 
But I know in the future there will be descendants connected to me,
Who will proudly embrace me for who I am, 
Even celebrating that I am a part of their rich and layered ancestry.

So, as far as the return of investment goes, 
By your criteria, I don't think it worked out so well for you.
But, by my standards of having my story live on,
It will be a future generation’s powerful blessing that will continue … and continue…and continue.
© Juanita Graham, 8/2025

Author Juanita Graham has a strong connection to the Williamsburg area.  She is an Associate Minister at the historic First Baptist Church in Williamsburg, an alumna of William & Mary, a member of the Advisory Board for the Let Freedom Ring Foundation, a board member of the Williamsburg Book Festival, and the Director of Outreach Service for a local service-based non-profit organization.

by Tyler Lewis

Throughout Summer 2025, I had the opportunity to work as an intern for the W&M Bray School Lab with Genealogist Elizabeth Drembus, as part of the Office of Strategic Cultural Partnerships’ Cultural Heritage Immersion Program (CHIP). I engaged in genealogical research for three Bray School students: Squire of the Philip Johnson household as well as Hannah and Sarah of the Robert Carter Nicholas (RCN) household. These research endeavors were truly like a roller coaster that took the story of the scholars and their enslaved communities far beyond Williamsburg. Moreover, I recorded the names of every enslaved individual in the Johnson and Nicholas households to grasp a better understanding of their enslaved communities.

Squire and the Philip Johnson Household

In 1765, Squire attended the Williamsburg Bray School, with Colonel Philip Johnson listed as his enslaver. Out of the three scholars that I researched, Squire had the most consistent paper trail. Legal documents and tax records placed him in the households of Philip Johnson and Sarah Johnson Lester (Johnson’s daughter) from the 1760s to 1792. While conducting this research, I wondered if there was something about Squire—either his skills, a connection to the Johnson family, or a high level of trust from the Johnsons—that made him seem worthy of receiving an education or remaining in the family.   This is of particular note, since Philip Johnson was heavily in debt from the 1760s up to his death in 1789. Johnson and his trustees regularly advertised auctions and hiring out of enslaved people in the Virginia Gazette newspapers. We can only imagine how Squire felt while constantly facing separation from his relatives and other members of his enslaved community. Johnson shuffled or sold his enslaved people throughout numerous Tidewater and Piedmont counties. Squire’s Bray School instruction in reading and spelling would have enabled him to read about the annual divisions and sales taking place within his community.

Hannah, Sarah, and the Robert Carter Nicholas Household

In 1762, Hannah attended the Williamsburg Bray School as a student (aged around 7 years old) from the Robert Carter Nicholas household. Unfortunately, Hannah was the most elusive of the three scholars, as the only other definitive supporting document is Nicholas’ 1765 letter to Reverend John Waring of the Bray Associates in London. In the letter, Nicholas complained that despite Hannah attending the Bray School for three years, she turned out to be a “sad jade” amidst his attempts to reform her. I interpreted the letter as Hannah’s education transforming her from a passive recipient to one who courageously developed her sense of self. Meanwhile, Nicholas lamented that he lost control of Hannah and how she defied the school’s purpose (in Nicholas’ perspective) of indoctrinating Black children to embrace their fate in bondage.

In 1769, Sarah attended the Bray School as another student from the Robert Carter Nicholas household. Bruton Parish Baptism records describe Sarah’s family unit, with Lucy as her mother and Caesar as her younger brother. Sarah’s story also reveals many complexities regarding slavery, in terms of her tasks and who exactly enslaved her. By the 1780s, Sarah and her family labored on Nicholas’ Westham Plantation in Henrico County. However, Nicholas’ 1780 will contained a clause that divided all enslaved people at Westham who worked in the house between his sons Lewis and Philip, while his estate would continue to enslave those in the fields. Henrico tax records only list Nicholas’ estate without Sarah, yet she appears in court records discussing the enslaved people from Westham who were partitioned to Nicholas’ sons. This discrepancy leads me to believe that Sarah conducted domestic tasks while Lucy and Caesar cultivated cash crops.

Researching Hannah and Sarah taught me the importance of persistence in genealogical research. I had to document the enslaved communities and land speculation efforts for RCN’s children that stretched across various counties throughout Virginia, Kentucky, and New York. Frequent discussions of weavers in factories (in Albemarle, Virginia, and Geneva, New York) made me think of sewing and embroidery taught at the Bray School. Furthermore, various legal and personal papers for Nicholas’ children listed multiple enslaved women named Hannah or Sarah, which further complicated this research.                    

 Reflection

I thoroughly enjoyed this summer internship because it perfectly encapsulated the Bray School Lab’s interdisciplinary nature in highlighting the students’ stories. It was also incredible to work within an extremely supportive environment alongside the Descendant Community, fellow CHIP co-workers, Bray School Lab supervisors, and other institutions. As an African-American man, it felt very gratifying to witness the passion of descendant communities in the Williamsburg area, Charlottesville, and throughout the country using genealogy to uplift our enslaved ancestors as heroes and agents in American history. In particular, engaging with the festivities on Descendants’ Day at James Monroe’s Highland revealed how institutional and descendant collaboration can highlight the importance of storytelling and humanize the experiences of the enslaved.

Tyler Lewis ‘26 is a William & Mary senior, studying history & anthropology. His previous genealogical experience includes researching enslaved communities for The Valentine Museum (Richmond, Virginia) and within his own family (with counties across Southside/Tidewater Virginia and the Carolinas). Tyler is continuing his research on Hannah, Sarah, and Squire this fall semester under the NIAHD Internship in Public History.