Archaeologists Excavated One of America's Oldest Schools—and Found a Secret Cellar
The Williamsburg Bray School is one of the oldest schools in the United States to educate Black students.
Archeologists discovered remains of the school on the William & Mary campus in Virginia.
Finds include the foundation of the school, a previously-undocumented cellar, and more than two centuries worth of buried artifacts.
Few schools can say they're older than the countries in which they reside, but the Williamsburg Bray School holds that distinct honor.
The Bray School was also one of the oldest schools in the United States dedicated to educating Black Americans. From 1760 to 1774, head teacher Ann Wager taught both free and enslaved students lessons from the Anglican Church. While the Bray School may seem revolutionary for its time, its history was actually much darker. The school was founded for the flawed purpose of convincing enslaved children to accept their circumstances.
Today, the school serves as a key chapter in the history of Black education, yet historians know little about the students who actually attended. Luckily, researchers just discovered a few more pieces of the puzzle: the near-complete foundation of the Bray School and an undocumented cellar filled with centuries worth of artifacts. The remains fall on the College of William & Mary's (W&M) campus in Virginia; excavations were led by the school's Center for Archeological Research.
According to a press release from W&M, the remnants of the cellar are sizable, measuring 36 feet by 18 feet. Tom Higgins, an archeologist for the Center, explained in the release that the cellar likely had multiple levels and was dug soon after the original foundation was laid. These recent excavations revealed the bottom of the cellar to be nearly 18 inches higher than previous research found.
'The discovery of this cellar is thrilling,' W&M President Katherine Rowe said in the release. '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.'
Perhaps even more valuable than the cellar itself is the historic treasure archeologists found while digging. The artifacts discovered at the site provide a rich story spanning from the 18th to the mid-20th century. The newly found broken pottery shards, slate pencil pieces, buttons, and jewelry painted a picture of everyday life at the Bray School.
According to the release, one of the team's favorite discoveries was part of a broken glass depicting the Roman goddess of wisdom, Minerva. One researcher at the center, Michele L. Brumfield, explained that the glass may have come from one of the school girls furnishing her dorm room, though the researchers say they're hesitant to draw any conclusions because 'it's early days.'
Now that these once-lost stories have come to light, some of the artifacts will be displayed as a permanent installation in W&M's Gates Hall. Other treasures will be lent to The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and exhibited at the Colin G. and Nancy N. Campbell Archaeology Center once it opens in 2026.
In the meantime, there's still much more to be done at the site.
'This is exciting,' Maureen Elgersman Lee, director of the W&M Bray School Lab, said in the press release. 'What else are we about to learn? We are not done understanding the history of the Williamsburg Bray School, the history of Black education. We are not done learning the history of this area, and we are certainly not done learning the history of this country.'
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