Explore the Williamsburg Bray School

The Williamsburg Bray School was funded by an Anglican missionary organization called the Associates of Dr. Bray.

This group opened several Bray Schools in British America in the years preceding the American Revolution.

The school operated in this building from 1760 until 1765, when it moved to a larger building.

Students began learning to read with a simple “primer” text called The Child’s First Book. More copies of this book were sent to the school than any other.

The school’s sole teacher, Ann Wager, was an aging widow of middling circumstances.

Because she was a widow, she managed her own financial affairs. She was paid £20 per year, which was roughly equivalent to a journeyman worker’s yearly wage.

Colonial Williamsburg’s silversmiths reproduced the Prentis ladle for the Bray School in 2024. Journeywoman Silversmith Bobbie Saye is shown here cutting a piece for the reproduction.

Tensions with Britain in the 1760s and 1770s led some women to produce homespun textiles. Wager's politics are unknown, but her son bought a loom in 1765—suggesting family knowledge of textiles. She may have prepared fibers for spinning with a hand carder like this one.

Archaeological excavations of the original Williamsburg Bray School site uncovered important information about the landscape surrounding the school.

Archaeologists found evidence of a garden, where students might have worked. They also found a privy.

Ann Wager died in 1774. At that time, the crisis between Britain and the colonies was already putting the school’s funding in jeopardy. Wager’s death brought an end to the school.

This building, which had been used as the Bray school from 1760 to 1765, was put to other uses and moved around. For decades, it was believed to have been lost.

After its rediscovery in 2020, the Williamsburg Bray School building was relocated to Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area on February 10, 2023.

Architectural Preservationists stripped away later additions and changes to restore the building to its 18th-century appearance.

Colonial Williamsburg’s trades operations reproduced many objects for the school’s restoration, including furniture, fabrics, bricks, books, and much more.

Here, journeyman Ayinde Martin works in the Joiner’s Shop on a blanket chest for Ann Wager’s living space.

Between 1760 and 1774, hundreds of Black students studied at the Williamsburg Bray School. Its relocation and restoration allows us to tell their stories—and the complicated history of slavery, race, and education—for years to come.