Williamsburg Bray School

We have lists of Williamsburg Bray School students from 1762, 1765, and 1769. These lists provide the names of 86 known students, though many students’ names were unrecorded. The 1762 list, which is the only one to provide the estimated ages of children, includes the following students: John (8 years old), Anne (6), Dick (3), London (7), Aggy (6), Shropshire (6), Aberdeen (5), Mary (7), Harry (5), George (8), Bristol (7), Mary Anne (7), Aggy (7), Roger (7), Mary (8), Rippon (3) Robert (6), Lucy (5), Elizabeth (10), George (6), Locust (8), Sarah (7), Hannah (7), Mary Jones (no age given, listed as “a free Negro”), John (7), Jane (9), Doll (7), Elisha Jones (no age given, listed as “free”), John (3), and Phoebe (3).

The 1765 list includes the following students’ names: Young, Mary, William, Jerry, Nanny, John, Dolly, Elizabeth, Catherine, Fanny, Isaac, Johanna, Joseph, Davy, Molly, Squire, Edmund, Johnny, Nancy, Davy, Phillis, Pat, Jack, James, Sal, Charles, Elizabeth, Betty, Harry, John, Sal, Sylvia, Roger, and Sam.

The 1769 report lists the following students: Grace, Sarah, Catherine, Nancy, Johanna, Clara Bee, Jerry, Joseph, Dick, Jack, Mary, Sally, Sukey, Sam, Jack, John Ashby (free), Mary Ashby (free), Sally, Adam, Fanny, Charlotte, Jenny, Jack, Dennis, Nancy, Judy, Ratchel, Mourning, Matt, and Harry.

Because the school’s records included enslavers’ names, we often know something about a student’s background and where they lived in Williamsburg. The only known free people of African descent to attend the school were a seven-year-old girl named Mary Anne, siblings Mary and Elisha Jones, and siblings John and Mary Ashby.⁷ Among enslaved students, about half belonged to gentry households, and half to “middling” enslavers.⁸

Many students would have worked for their enslavers’ businesses while in school. Bray School students Davy and Nancy, for example, likely learned about wigmaking from enslaver Edward Charlton, or about millinery from Jane Charlton. Anthony Hay, a cabinetmaker and later owner of the Raleigh Tavern, sent several enslaved people to the Bray School: Rippon, Jenny, Jerry, Joseph, and Dick. Tavernkeeper Jane Vobe sent Sal and Jack to the Bray School.⁹ These enslaved individuals helped to maintain their enslavers’ households and contributed to their businesses. In some cases, enslavers might have hoped the skills they developed at the school would make them “more useful to their Owners.”¹⁰

While we don’t know how carefully they were followed, the school’s regulations, written in 1762, offer some information about what attending the school was like. Teacher Ann Wager was required to open the school at seven o’clock in the morning during winter, and six o’clock in the summer. She led prayers in the morning and evening and instructed the students to pray before meals. Wager led the students from the schoolhouse to the church “so often as divine Service is there performed.” She instructed them in how to participate at church, “kneeling or standing” as required.¹¹

The school was intended to help students develop discipline and good habits, to “set a good Example to other Negroes.” Truancy was forbidden. Wager was asked to allow no students “to be absent at any Time, but when they are sick or have some other reasonable Excuse.” She was to “keep her Scholars diligently to their Business.” To keep them out of trouble, Wager was asked to assign homework on Sundays: “that they may be prevented from spending the Lord's Day profanely or idly, she shall give her Scholars some Task out of the most useful Parts of Scripture, to be learnt on each Lord's Day, according is their Capacities, & shall require a strict Performance of it every Monday Morning.”¹²

• John C. Van Horne, ed., Religious Philanthropy and Colonial Slavery: The American Correspondence of the Associates of Dr. Bray, 1717-1777 (University of Illinois Press, 1985).
• Maureen Elgersman Lee and Nicole Brown, The Williamsburg Bray School: A History Through Records, Reflections, and Rediscovery (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2024).
• Thomas N. Ingersoll, “‘Releese us out of this Cruell Bondegg’: An Appeal from Virginia in 1723,” William and Mary Quarterly 51 (Oct. 1994): 777–82.
• Jennifer Bridges Oast, “Educating Eighteenth-Century Black Children: The Bray Schools,” (M.A. thesis, College of William and Mary, 2000).
• Nicole Brown, “Preliminary Williamsburg Bray School Historical Report, Block 14 Building 41,” Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (2024).
• Antonio T. Bly, “In Pursuit of Letters: A History of the Bray Schools for Enslaved Children in Colonial Virginia,” History of Education Quarterly 51 (Nov. 2011): 429–59.

1. Thomas N. Ingersoll, “‘Releese us out of this Cruell Bondegg’: An Appeal from Virginia in 1723,” William and Mary Quarterly 51 (Oct. 1994): 781-82.
2. John C. Van Horne, ed., Religious philanthropy and colonial slavery: the American correspondence of the Associates of Dr. Bray, 1717-1777 (University of Illinois Press, 1985), 2–5.
3. Van Horne, ed., Religious philanthropy and colonial slavery, 121–26.
4. Jennifer Bridges Oast, “Educating Eighteenth-Century Black Children: The Bray Schools,” (M.A. thesis, William & Mary, 2000), 8.
5. Oast, “Educating Eighteenth-Century Black Children,” 11.
6. Van Horne, ed., Religious philanthropy and colonial slavery, 253.
7. Oast, “Educating Eighteenth-Century Black Children,” 23.
8. Nicole Brown, “Preliminary Williamsburg Bray School Historical Report, Block 14 Building 41,” Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (2024), 6.
9. Brown, “Preliminary Williamsburg Bray School Historical Report,” 10-11, 17–18, 29–30, 37.
10. Van Horne, ed., Religious Philanthropy and Colonial Slavery, 189.
11. Van Horne, ed., Religious Philanthropy and Colonial Slavery, 144–46, 189–91.
12. Van Horne, ed., Religious Philanthropy and Colonial Slavery, 144–46.
13. Van Horne, ed., Religious philanthropy and colonial slavery, 188, 241–42, 277–78. Note that the 93% figure was calculated using students whose names repeat on the lists.
14. Van Horne, ed., Religious Philanthropy and Colonial Slavery, 191.