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.