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Historical Highway MarkersSchool for Black ChildrenW-109
The Associates of Dr. Bray, a London-based charity, founded a school for enslaved and free black children here in 1760. Located in Williamsburg at the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin, a member of the Associates, the school received support from the College of William & Mary. Anne Wager instructed as many as 400 boys and girls during her 14 years as teacher. In a culture hostile to educating African Americans, Wager taught the students principles of Christianity, deportment, reading, and, possibly, writing. The curriculum reinforced proslavery ideology but also spread literacy within the black community. The school moved from this site by 1765 and closed in 1774.
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References/Bibliographic Citation: John C. Van Horne, ed., Religious Philanthropy and Colonial Slavery: The American Correspondence of the Associates of Dr. Bray, 1717-1777 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985). Terry L. Meyers, “Benjamin Franklin, The College of William and Mary, and the Williamsburg Bray School,” Anglican and Episcopal History, vol. 79, no. 4 (Dec. 2010): 368-393. Jennifer Bridges Oast, “Educating Eighteenth-Century Black Children: The Bray Schools,” M.A. Thesis, College of William and Mary, 2000. Antonio T. Bly, “In Pursuit of Letters: A History of the Bray Schools for Enslaved Children in Colonial Virginia,” History of Education Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 4 (Nov. 2011): 429-459. “Bray School Excavation,” Colonial Williamsburg: http://research.history.org/projects/bray/ “Search for 1760 Bray School Turns up Something Even Older,” https://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2013/bray-school-search-finds-something-even-older-123.php Brendan Wolfe, “The Associates of Dr. Bray,” Encyclopedia Virginia, https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Associates_of_Dr_Bray Valerie Scura Trovato, “Slate Pencils?: Education of Free and Enslaved African American Children at the Bray School, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1760-1774,” M.A. Thesis, College of William and Mary, 2016. |