Historic Tradespeople Restore the Bray School

Our schools make us who we are. From 1760 to 1774, hundreds of free and enslaved Black children received an education at the Williamsburg Bray School. Each spent much of their childhood in this small building. Understanding the building where these children spent thousands of hours can help us to better understand their stories.

After it was rediscovered in late 2020, Colonial Williamsburg researchers began attempting to understand what the Bray School’s interior and exterior would have looked like in the eighteenth century. The Tradespeople of Colonial Williamsburg built on this research to craft furniture, fabrics, bricks, books, and much more for the building using eighteenth-century knowledge and techniques. Read more below about each trade shop’s contribution to this extraordinary project.

Projects like the Bray School restoration use large amounts of iron and steel, the black metals that blacksmiths work with. In 2023, the blacksmiths began making tools for the carpenters, including chisels and shingling hatchets (which have a sharp hatchet edge on one side and a hammer on the other). They have also now created about 8,000 nails to be used in flooring and siding.

The blacksmiths also produced hinges and locks for the school. Early Chesapeake buildings typically had locks on each door, even in a mid-level tenement house such as the Bray School. The blacksmiths are also providing furnishings like fireplace equipment and iron lighting devices. “I like to see objects that I have made contributing to the fabric of this community,” says Master Blacksmith Ken Schwarz, “Working with iron gives me the satisfaction of knowing that the work that I do will contribute to our work here for generations to come.”

Approximately five hundred books and pamphlets were donated to the Williamsburg Bray school during the fourteen years it was open. The bookbinders are preparing a preliminary order of three Testaments and seven Psalters, all simply bound in sheepskin with plain blue paper covers. Bibles, Common Books of Prayer, and English Instructors are on the horizon. The Bookbinders are working closely with Bob Lyon, Colonial Williamsburg Alumnus and Volunteer, and Katie McKinney, Colonial Williamsburg's Associate Curator of Maps and Prints, to determine exactly how the bindings will be prepared.

While the Bookbinders are making these books, conversations with guests often turn from the books themselves into questions about the literacy and agency of the enslaved and free children at the Bray School. According to Apprentice Bookbinder Mary Hannah Grier, the “glimpses we have found of children like Isaac Bee and Hannah show their determination to be seen, to be known as people, not property.” “It is our job,” says Journeywoman Bookbinder Barbara J. Swanson, “to find those stories and to make sure that every person who comes to Colonial Williamsburg can see themselves in the story of the founding of America.”

The Brickyard produced several thousand bricks for the restoration work being done at the Bray School. The brickmakers worked with Colonial Williamsburg’s architectural historians to identify a proper size to replicate the original bricks. Then they spent most of the summer of 2022 fabricating them. The Brickmakers also produced about 2,000 gallons of lime for the school’s mortar. This lime will be used for laying the brick and doing necessary repointing and repair work.

It’s easy to overlook brick. It’s everywhere today. But in the eighteenth century, most Virginians couldn’t afford to build with brick. It took a huge amount of time and resources to make bricks. So don't take brick for granted: it’s the literal foundation for projects like the Bray School!

“Working on the Bray School project has been a humbling experience for us in the brickyard,” says Master Brickmaker Josh Graml, “We have always interpreted the work of enslaved brickmakers here. Having the opportunity to leave our mark on a school for the education of free and enslaved Black children has given us an interpretive throughline that really resonates with our guests.”

The cabinetmakers are creating a dressing table, a gateleg dining table, and a desk for the Bray School. They will each be made from local black walnut. These items will fill the personal living space of the school’s teacher Ann Wager.

We don’t know what furniture Wager owned. But curator Tara Chicirda assembled a likely assortment of pieces based on an extensive study of the furniture contained within estate inventories of widows from a similar economic background. She concluded that Wager likely owned pieces she acquired early in her marriage or second hand prior to moving into the school. Though nice, the furniture was probably no longer fashionable when the school opened in 1760. It would have appeared plain and dated compared to the fine furnishings in the homes of the wealthy enslavers who sent children to the Bray School. But within the Bray School itself, these pieces will stand in poignant contrast to the even simpler furniture available to the enslaved and free Black students.

Though the students may not have owned fine furniture themselves, they played a role in cleaning and caring for the fine furnishings in their enslaver’s homes and businesses. Some may have been destined for training in trades like cabinetmaking. Eighteenth-century cabinetmaker Anthony Hay, who established the shop where Colonial Williamsburg’s cabinetmakers work today, sent several children to the Bray School in the 1760s. “Through connecting to the school today,” says Bill Pavlak, Master Cabinetmaker, “we can shine a light on this important and complex part of our shop’s history. How did the lives of these enslaved children, Rippon, Jerry, Joseph, and Dick, intertwine with Hay’s cabinetmaking business?”

Joiners usually made architectural details for well-to-do houses, like doors, window sashes, and moldings. But for the Bray School project, the Joinery is producing fifteen pieces of furniture: an armchair, two wooden blank benches, two slab log benches, a joined bench with turned legs, a walnut worktable with turned legs, two blanket chests, and six ladderback chairs. These will be created in a middling style suitable for a widowed schoolteacher.

Many of these pieces will expand the shop’s skills and interpretive opportunities. For example, journeyman Peter Hudson has learned about building ladderback chairs using unseasoned wood. Through the worktable and a blanket chest, both Laura Hollowood and Ayinde Martin will develop their wood turning skills. For Laura the table and blanket chest complete the second level of her apprenticeship. The armchair with its angled turned back legs offered challenges to Brian Weldy. The joiners are proud to contribute to the interpretation of an important part of Williamsburg’s history.

The printers produced 1,000 copies of “The Child’s First Book,” a book printed in London and sent to Williamsburg for the Bray School students to learn. This work involved typesetting each page, printing two sixteen-page forms, folding these, and stitching them. According to Journeyman Supervisor Peter Stinely, typesetting the “many hyphenations breaking the larger words into syllables” was “verrrry annoying.”

The printing shop has two historical connections to the Bray School. Its second printer William Hunter Sr. was a friend of Benjamin Franklin. Together, Franklin and Hunter put Williamsburg forward as a site for one of the missionary Bray Schools that were being founded in North America. Another connection with the Bray School comes through the type used in the print shop. It was created by William Caslon, who learned the world of letter founding after being hired to create Arabic type for an English translation of the Qu’ran. The charity that hired Caslon for this task was the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, founded by Thomas Bray, who also created the organization that eventually opened the Bray School in Williamsburg.

The weavers of Colonial Williamsburg are making a variety of textiles for the furnishing of the Bray School. These include curtains for the windows, bedding for Ann Wager’s quarters, table coverings, and more. These everyday objects will help fill in the empty spaces and breathe life into the building. They are based on historic weaving drafts and textile sample books. They are representative of the everyday fabrics anyone in Williamsburg would have used.

“One of the things that connects every human in the world is fabric,” says apprentice weaver Pamela Russo, “It resonates through the centuries in ways we don't even realize.” Joe Wixted, journeyman weaver, adds “We are recreating this fabric the same way it was done in the eighteenth century, and we are making it to honor and remember some of the people who may have made fabric on the plantations of our Founding Fathers.”