A historic building believed to be the oldest school used to teach black children in the US was picked up and relocated to Colonial Williamsburg on Friday.
The Bray School, built 25 years before the American Revolution, was loaded onto a flatbed truck and transported half a mile from an area near the William & Mary College campus to the living history museum.
The move comes as the historic site continues to emphasize African-American history.
“Religion was at the heart of the school, and it was not an abolition gospel,” said Maureen Elgersman Lee, lab director at William & Mary’s Bray School.
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Bray School is aligned with a foundation established at its new location at Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia on Friday, February 10, 2023. (Billy Schuerman/The Virginian-Pilot via AP)
The pinewood building housed up to 30 students at a time, historians have said.
“There was this need to proselytize and bring salvation without doing anything to destabilize the institution of slavery,” Lee said. “Save the soul, but continue to enslave the body. It was here versus hereafter.”
On Friday, hundreds of people lined the streets to celebrate the journey to Virginia’s colonial capital as it continues to teach ancient history through re-enactments, interpreters and restored buildings.
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The Bray School stands as a symbol for historians and their descendants alike who challenge the belief that all enslaved Americans lacked education. However, the school’s faith-based curriculum, created by an English charity, justified slavery and encouraged students to accept their destiny as God’s plan.
Workers prepare to move the original structure that housed what is believed to be the oldest school in the US for black children in Williamsburg, Virginia on Friday, February 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Ben Finley)
The curriculum was still empowering, perhaps even subversive, historians said.
“I was going through a facsimile of one of the books, and there are words like ‘freedom,'” Lee said. “What did learning those words expand these kids’ sense of themselves? Their sense of the world?”
The school’s student body is believed to have included free and enslaved students.
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A white teacher named Ann Wager, who lived upstairs at the school, taught some 300 to 400 students, whose ages ranged from 3 to 10 years old, according to surviving records.
The Bray School was established in 1760 on the recommendation of Benjamin Franklin, president of a London-based Anglican charity named after the philanthropist Reverend Thomas Bray. It functioned until 1774.
The Bray School moves to Prince George Street in Williamsburg, Virginia on Friday, February 10, 2023. The building will move off of the William & Mary campus and into Colonial Williamsburg. It is believed to be the oldest school for black children in the US, built 25 years before the American Revolution. (Billy Schuerman/The Virginian-Pilot via AP)
The charity also established schools in other cities, including New York and Philadelphia.
The building served as a private home for years before being incorporated into the William & Mary campus.
Williamsburg is less than 10 miles from Jamestown, which was established by England in 1607.
Williamsburg’s Mel Horan sketches The Bray School as it moves down Prince George Street in Williamsburg, Virginia on Friday, February 10, 2023. The building will move off the William & Mary campus into Colonial Williamsburg. It is believed to be the oldest school for black children in the US, built 25 years before the American Revolution. (Billy Schuerman/The Virginian-Pilot via AP)
The identity of the original Bray School building was confirmed in 2021 through the use of dendrochronology, a scientific method that examines tree rings in wood to determine the harvest date of the wood.
“This is a remarkable story of survival,” said Matthew Webster, Colonial Williamsburg’s executive director of architectural conservation and research. “And for us, it’s very important to bring it back (to its original state) and tell the full and true story.”
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Colonial Williamsburg is a museum founded in 1926. It began teaching black history in 1979.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
