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Posted on 06/27/2025 8:58:16 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
According to a statement released by The College of William & Mary, recent archaeological work revealed the foundations of the eighteenth-century Williamsburg Bray School, one of the most historic buildings on the college's early campus. In operation from 1760 to 1765, the school was one of the oldest known institutions in North America dedicated to the education of free and enslaved Black children. The discovery was originally made by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation but is currently being investigated by the W&M Center for Archaeological Research. Archaeologists uncovered a previously undocumented cellar filled with centuries of artifacts dating from the eighteenth through the early twentieth century, when the building housed individuals who were among the first generations of women to attend college in the United States. Objects found in the cellar space include jewelry, slate pencil fragments, buttons, and sherds of pottery and glass. One glass fragment depicts the Roman goddess Minerva. "The discovery of this cellar is thrilling," said William & Mary president Katherine Rowe. "The roots of our city and university entwine here. Every layer of history that it reveals gives us new insights into our early republic, from the Williamsburg Bray School through the generations that followed, up through the early 20th century."
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
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Glass sherd with a depiction of the Roman goddess MinervaWilliam & Mary Center for Archaeological Research
Lovely!
Wow, an educator who called our country a republic, not a democracy.
Impressive, but more impressive is someone making the point that in Colonial Virginia, pre-dating the founding of the U.S., one of the very few schools, one allied with the second-oldest post-secondary school in the colonies that would become the U.S. (Laval , was educating blacks regardless of status of servitude, and both black women as well as men.
I wonder if Harvard had a companion school? Surely those enlightened Puritans must have been doing that sort of out reach, while the Southerners were cultivating the sort of people who would give us Know-Nothings (that is sarcasm-—and for full disclosure I had people on the Mayflower, and also some in Virginia dating back at least before the founding of Harvard)
Two Mexican schools dated back to the mid-16th century, and so have both Harvard and Laval beaten soundly, but only one of them (the older one) has been in continuous operation. The other (the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico) operated continuously from 1551-1865, but then closed. A brilliant move resulting likely from a combination of post-colonialism and undermining the Church. Without any particular grounds, the University of Mexico, founded in 1910, claims to be its successor institution.
Interesting, thank you for the education.
I am sure you'll be pleased to learn that Harvard was a desperate "buzzer beater" shot at depriving William & Mary of the claim of being first. Harvard was a ridiculous laughingstock institution hosted in a barn and stocked with a curriculum of store-bought pedestrian books taught by a founding generation of semi-literates having no degrees. Harvard's first round of graduates were just a bunch of self-promoting midwits who granted degrees upon each other. At the time of its founding, William & Mary greatly surpassed Harvard in quality and reputation.
We frequently hear that it was illegal to teach blacks in the south how to read yet when facts are known there were schools for blacks and there were literate blacks.
Harvard had an Indian School from 1640 till the end of the century. They translated the Bible into at least one of the Indian languages. Later when there were blacks in the colonies Harvard hired many of them and have been severely criticized for it. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t
:^)
Ping!
One of the Presidents of Harvard is quoted as saying “The reason why Harvard is such a great repository of knowledge is that the students come with so much and leave with so little.”
The bits of your observations that I was not already aware of do not surprise me. Harvard’s founding has long sounded to me like an overgrown home-school co-op, which is better than nothing—and a definite start
At the time, its best days were still ahead. That is no longer the case.
As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
(If you’ve been to Rome, Oregon, it may have been built in a couple of hours . . . .)
My original Grandfather came to Virginia in 1735 so very likely a relation.
Amazing!
The story is he was a slave to a freed black slave from England and then married his daughter and received a hundred acres of the black man’s land so I have some Negro in me.
Congratulations... I conclude that you're probably a great dancer! Example:
Sure, natural rhythm
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