Archaeologists Unearth Artifacts From One of the Nation’s Oldest Schools for Black Children
News of the discoveries comes amid the opening of the Williamsburg Bray School building, which educated hundreds of free and enslaved Black children between 1760 and 1774
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Archaeologists in Virginia have unearthed the foundation of the Williamsburg Bray School, an 18th-century schoolhouse for free and enslaved Black children.
Researchers uncovered the nearly complete building foundation on the campus of William & Mary this spring, the university announced last week. They also found a previously undocumented cellar and a variety of artifacts from the 18th century through the mid-20th century.
“It’s thrilling,” says Tom Higgins, one of the archaeologists working on the project, to the Washington Post’s Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff.
Did you know? The origins of the Williamsburg Bray School
The school’s aim was to teach Black students to read and practice Anglicanism, the faith of the Church of England, in Virginia.The Williamsburg Bray School operated between 1760 and 1774, providing a faith-based education to hundreds of students between the ages of 3 and 10 years old. The school closed down during the American Revolutionary War and later became a private home. William & Mary eventually bought the building and used it to house Methodist women attending the university from 1924 to 1930.
In 1930, the schoolhouse structure was relocated to a new site about a block away, where the university continued to use it for various purposes. Meanwhile, back at the schoolhouse’s original site, the university constructed a dormitory called Brown Hall on top of the historic foundation.
Now, Brown Hall is being transformed into Robert M. Gates Hall, which will be a hub for teaching and research. As construction gets underway, archaeologists are using the opportunity to investigate the site.
The cellar measures 36 feet by 18 feet and appears to have had two floor levels, according to the university. Since it’s not lined with bricks, archaeologists suspect the cellar was dug not long after the building’s foundations were laid.
The artifacts include fragments of handmade ceramics known as colonoware, a type of pottery made by Native Americans and enslaved Africans. Archaeologists also found bits of Greek Revival ceramics and glass, including one piece that depicts the Roman goddess Minerva.
The excavations also revealed items that were probably left behind by the female students who lived in the schoolhouse building in the 1920s. The objects, which include brooches and flatware painted with a Greek meandros pattern, probably fell through the cracks between the floor boards, per the Washington Post.
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Archaeologists at the university’s Center for Archaeological Research are now taking a closer look at the excavated objects. In the future, they hope to include some of the items in a planned, permanent exhibition that will be located inside Gates Hall. The university also hopes to draw the outline of the Bray School’s foundation on the floor inside the building.
Some artifacts will also be sent to Colonial Williamsburg, the living history museum roughly a mile away, where they’ll be displayed in the forthcoming Colin G. and Nancy N. Campbell Archaeology Center, which is scheduled to open next year.
News of the archaeological discoveries comes amid the opening of the Williamsburg Bray School building, which has been restored to its 18th-century appearance.
After hiding in plain sight for more than 200 years, the building was re-discovered on the William & Mary campus in 2020. Three years later, the schoolhouse found a new permanent home at Colonial Williamsburg.
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The structure opened to the public on June 19, known as Juneteenth, the holiday marking the end of slavery in the United States. It’s now a museum that invites visitors to learn more about the students’ lives, as well as what was happening in the world around them.
“The existence of the school tells us that African Americans were a part of the fabric of Williamsburg despite the desire to not see them,” says Maureen Elgersman Lee, a scholar who directs the William & Mary Bray School Lab, to the New York Times’ Audra D.S. Burch. “The children grew up. They created lives within the system they lived in, whether free or enslaved. They entered this new period, this soon-to-be republic, and they were part of America’s story.”
Also on June 19, Colonial Williamsburg hosted a groundbreaking ceremony to mark the start of construction on the African Baptist Meeting House and Burial Ground. The site was once home to the first permanent building of the First Baptist Church, which is one of the nation’s oldest Black congregations. Crews are now working to reconstruct the historic church, which is slated to open in 2026.
