Here's a story about real property records, a charitable trust, eightenteenth century education, the Enlightenment, and slavery. I love it....
The Washington Post has an inspiring story this morning on work that my friend Terry Meyers of William and Mary's English Department has done on the Bray School in Williamsburg. It was a school founded in the middle of the eighteenth century -- using money from the Associates of Dr. Bray, a charitable organization in London -- to educate both free and enslaved African American children.
There are two pieces of this story of particular interest. First, Terry's almost certainly located the building where the school operated, a particular find in Williamsburg, where the historical importance of seemingly every building's already been researched. The building now houses William and Mary's ROTC program. The lover of old buildings in me finds this very exciting. And it's great to have recovered a site of such importance in African American history, as well.
For me the even more exciting part is a little bit more speculative: why did the "Associates of Dr. Bray," a charitable organization based in London, fund a school in Williamsburg? On that Terry moves a little more speculatively -- and onto ground that I particularly love, drawing inferences about intellectual history from a couple of tantalizing data points. In an article, "Benjamin Franklin, the College of William and Mary, and the Williamsburg Bray School," forthcoming in Anglican and Episcopal History in late 2010 or very early 2011, Terry shows that the site was selected in part because of a recommendation from Benjamin Franklin. Now, why would Franklin select Williamsburg? Well, perhaps because he visited it in the 1750s while working to improve the colonial postal system. Perhaps the ideas of the Enlightenment and the kindred spirits that Franklin met in Williamsburg (perhaps even at William and Mary) motivated his recommendation of Williamsburg -- and his nomination of Reverend Thomas Dawson, who was then president of William and Mary, to serve as an overseer of the school.
Meyers' article discusses a bunch of evidence surrounding Franklin's suggestion of Williamsburg and I highly recommend his beautifully written, indeed charming, article when it comes out. Let me give you one of the payoff paragraphs now:
But why would Franklin have included Williamsburg in his list of possible locations for a school for the Christian education of black children? Located in a southern colony, where slavery was pervasive and deeply entrenched, Williamsburg might have seemed a chancy place for such a school to succeed. That Franklin nominated Williamsburg has struck no one, however, as worthy of particular comment. Franklin knew William Hunter, the postmaster and printer in Williamsburg—and that alone has seemed sufficient to account for his suggestion of the site. But when Franklin visited Williamsburg in 1756, he may have discovered at the College of William and Mary evidence of sustained concern for the Christian education of blacks. If this is right, Franklin would seem to have had in mind a pragmatic consideration, a kind of institutional affiliation that would increase the odds of the school’s succeeding.
If I might be permitted to add one other observation, the recovery of these important pieces of history are some of the benefits of university initiatives to investigate their history. Just as one of the positive pieces of news that emerged from Brown's investigation of its history with slavery was the story of its important role in the anti-slavery movement, so William and Mary's Lemon Project is showing how Enlightenment ideas in circulation in Williamsburg helped lead to a project for education -- and also helped lead to the Declaration of Independence, which is still inspiring people around the world today.
The full Washington Post article, "William and Mary may be home to oldest standing schoolhouse for black children," is available here. Further coverage of this is available at the Chronicle of Higher Ed, which ran a story about it on May 30. Here in the faculty lounge you may find this paragraph from the Chron mildly amusing:
If Mr. Meyers were a young historian, such a discovery could be a career maker. But he's a 65-year-old English professor whose career was long since made—he's been at William & Mary 40 years now, with assorted books and articles about Swinburne and others to his credit, along with a stint as English-department chair. Nevertheless, the house has clearly piqued Mr. Meyers's curiosity. "I've told people I'm not going to retire," he says with a grin, "until that building is interpreted and restored."
The Chronicle traces in detail the sluething that was necessary to match the current ROTC building to the Bray school. Property professors will love it!
Meyers' Bray article is not available on the net pre-publication, but one of his other articles on William and Mary is available at ssrn.
The image of the house where the Bray school met, now on the William and Mary campus, is from the W&M press release on the Post and Chronicle stories. And here's a picture I took of it in October 2013.
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