Archaeologists in Virginia have unearthed the foundation of a building from the 1700s that once supported the nation's oldest surviving schoolhouse for Black children, the College of William & Mary announced Wednesday, per the AP. The university in Williamsburg said the foundation is nearly completely intact. Archaeologists also uncovered a cellar that is layered with centuries of artifacts, including slate pencil fragments and jewelry. The schoolhouse was later used as a dormitory, housing some of the first generations of women to attend college in the US. "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," said university president Katherine A. Rowe.
The Williamsburg Bray School taught hundreds of mostly enslaved students in the 1760s. The school rationalized slavery within a religious framework, yet in teaching the students literacy, gave them more agency. The schoolhouse was eventually incorporated into William & Mary's growing campus, expanded for various purposes—including to house Methodist female students from 1924 to 1930—then moved to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, a living history museum, after it was identified in 2020.
Archaeologists with Colonial Williamsburg recently uncovered the foundation and cellar during a major project to renovate a university building, Gates Hall. The school's archaeologists, including Tom Higgins, are also involved. Higgins said the cellar is not lined with bricks and "was probably dug soon after the foundations were laid." Researchers have found handmade ceramics often associated with sites of enslavement and Indigenous communities, the university said. There are also items that appear to be more recent, such as a shard of glass depicting the Roman goddess Minerva, which officials said might be traced to one of the 20th-century female residents. (More Virginia stories.)
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