If you had asked Matthew Webster just five years ago what happened to the 18th-century Williamsburg Bray School building, he would have guessed it was another historic building lost to time—a sad ending, given its significance.

Opened on September 29, 1760, the Bray School in Williamsburg, Virginia, taught enslaved and free Black children from the area. The school’s only teacher, a white woman named Ann Wager, lived in the weatherboard building and taught a pro-slavery, faith-based curriculum based on the teachings of the Church of England. More than 100 students were taught there until the school relocated in 1764 or ’65.

There were no clear records of the building’s fate. “We had a transcribed part of a letter [from a Bray School trustee] describing the building as not ‘tenantable,’” says Webster, executive director of architectural preservation and research at The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. “And that was interpreted as an issue with the condition of the building. It was in poor shape, so they left.” And that, Webster thought, was that.

But Chancellor Professor Emeritus of English Terry Meyers at William & Mary had a hunch: He believed, based on archival material, that a white building housing the school’s Military Science Department was actually the original Bray School building. It had been moved to the William & Mary campus in the 1930s and altered and expanded extensively. Colonial Williamsburg archaeologists excavated the site more than a decade ago, but nothing definitive about its earliest days was concluded.

In early 2020, Webster and his architectural preservation team were called to the building in hopes that they could determine its exact age. “It looked like your basic 1930s or ’40s house,” Webster says. With permission from school administration, they conducted an “invasive investigation,” removing some of the 20th-century siding and plaster to better inspect the building’s original frame. It quickly became clear that this was likely 18th-century construction.

“So then the question became, was it built in 1760? Or 1780?” Webster says. A small difference, he notes, but the difference between knowing if this was the Bray School or not.

Webster called a dendrochronologist—a specialist who could study the growth patterns in the wood of the old framing and identify the “death date” of a tree, or the moment it was felled. Michael Worthington of Baltimore-based Oxford Tree-Ring Laboratory took samples of wood from the building, and his findings, Webster says, were shocking: One sample dated to sometime in 1759, two dated to the winter of 1759-60, and one dated to the spring of 1760. Knowing when the trees were felled, and knowing that back then the wood would be formed and sent to construction immediately, they had their answer.

“With this information, we pretty much knew we had the Bray School,” Webster says. “It had been hidden in plain sight.”

Shortly after these findings, Colonial Williamsburg tracked down the school trustee’s full letter, which explained that the Bray School vacated the building because it had outgrown the space. “Thirty children, plus a teacher living there—it wasn’t a matter of its condition, but its size,” Webster says. “The pieces kept falling into place.”

In late 2021, Colonial Williamsburg and William & Mary launched the Williamsburg Bray School Initiative, a joint venture to research and preserve the Bray School, and announced plans to move the building close to its original location on what is now Colonial Williamsburg property.

But first, Webster and his team of six preservation experts, plus staff members from several Colonial Williamsburg trades departments and outside contractors, had to stabilize the building enough to move it. As they continued dismantling the alterations and additions, they found that much of the building’s original wood had been repurposed. “We found that any time they needed a little piece of wood to put something back together, they were using the 18th-century trim, the 18th-century roof rafters, the 18th-century chair rail. It was absolutely everywhere,” he says. They also located an original door, two original window sashes, window casings, and an original stair partly covered by modern trim.

“It rapidly moved from a project where we thought we would have to make a lot of educated guesses to this incredible protective preservation effort because it was so remarkably intact,” he says.

More than 80 children who attended the school are identified by name. Bray School Lab researchers continue to build on this knowledge and locate more of the children’s descendants. The descendants were the first to tour the newly restored building just before its official dedication on Nov. 1, 2024.

Today, the Bray School is believed to be the oldest extant building for the education of Black children in the United States. “Visitors can walk on 1760s floors. They’ll see the 1760s stairs,” Webster says. When it opens this summer, they’ll learn about all aspects of the building’s history, from its 18th-century construction to its 21st-century preservation. And they’ll learn about the students, their experiences, and their lives after the Bray School.

Editor's Note: This story was updated on May 1, 2025.