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Hearth: Faculty, staff, students and community members attended the ceremony to mark the beginning of construction on the memorial. Titled “Hearth: Memorial to the Enslaved,” the brick structure will resemble a fireplace and will feature the names of people who are known to have been enslaved by the university. Photo by Stephn Salpukas
Hearth: Faculty, staff and alumni push down the top of a brick wall that stands where the memorial will be constructed. Photo by Stephen Salpukas
Hearth: President Emeritus Taylor Reveley LL.D. ’18, W&M President Katherine A. Rowe and Jody Allen Ph.D. ’07 push down a large panel of the wall in the location where the memorial will be constructed.
A discovery on campus: William & Mary and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation jointly announced in a Feb. 25 press release that the building at 524 Prince George St. contains the original structure of the Bray School, where free and enslaved Black children were educated from 1760 to 1765. Illustration of front-page news story
Photo - of - by staff | March 8, 2021
Prince George House is perhaps the most inconspicuous building on a picturesque campus, but for a week or so the structure tucked away near William & Mary’s Sorority Court basked in the glow of national media.
William & Mary and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation jointly announced in a Feb. 25 press release that the building at 524 Prince George St. contains the original structure of the Bray School, where free and enslaved Black children were educated from 1760 to 1765.
Colonial Williamsburg, William & Mary identify structure of 18th-century school
Crystal Castleberry, an intern on the 2013 dig, displays an 18th-century coin bearing the visage of George III. The field schools turned up numerous features and artifacts that ranged from before the founding of Williamsburg to a Brown Hall door key.
WILLIAMSBURG, VA
.- A small, white building tucked away on the William & Mary campus once housed the Williamsburg Bray School, an 18th-century institution dedicated to the education of enslaved and free Black children, researchers have determined. Now, the university and Colonial Williamsburg are working together to ensure current and future generations learn about the complex history of what is likely the oldest extant building in the United States dedicated to the education of Black children and the stories of those who were part of it.
William & Mary Military Science/Digges House at 524 Prince George St. (WYDaily/Courtesy of William and Mary)
The unassuming, small, white building tucked away on Prince George Street houses a lot more history than was originally thought.
The building most recently housed offices for William and Mary’s Department of Military Science and is known as the Prince George House on campus.
Dendrochronology analysis of the building’s wood framing conducted in 2020 by Colonial Williamsburg researchers confirmed the structure once housed Williamsburg’s Bray School, an institution that educated many of the town’s Black children from 1760 to 1774.
The Bray School’s mission was to impart Christian education to Black children and for students to accept enslavement as divinely ordained. The school was suggested for establishment in Williamsburg by Benjamin Franklin.