Talk:Williamsburg Bray School

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A fact from Williamsburg Bray School appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 March 2023 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the Williamsburg Bray School – the "oldest extant building in the United States dedicated to the education of Black children" – was moved a second time in February 2023 (pictured)?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2023/March. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Williamsburg Bray School.

A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on September 29, 2023.

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Location

The sources do not make clear the history of where the school was located when it was open. IN particular it is not clear if the school was on the campus of W&M, as it was in a building owned by Dudley Digges. Possibly (talk) 14:33, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Knitting

A user objects in an edit summary that there is "no evidence the girls were taught how to knit", however see this source, this source and this source. I had mistakenly added that writing was part of the curriculum; that claim is debatable.--- Possibly (talk) 15:44, 5 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Continuing Possibly's legacy

A major contributor to this article, Daniel Logan Jolliffe aka Possibly, died a little over a year ago. To honor his legacy and that of those who attended the school, I hope to spend the next couple days expanding this article to at least a stable B-class state. Please join in if you are interested in improving access on this topic. ~ Pbritti (talk) 20:53, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Unusually but happily, one of the leading historians on this topic has graciously contacted me in private and provided additional details and sources. For this reason, some details contained within certain sources will be removed or left out due to their incongruence with what Meyers has uncovered in research. Questions about these changes are welcome. ~ Pbritti (talk) 20:55, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cielquiparle (talk) 14:32, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

(

Comment or view
Article history

)

The Williamsburg Bray School being moved, 10 February 2023

~~... that a William & Mary professor interested in poetry rediscovered the "oldest extant building in the United States dedicated to the education of Black children" (pictured)?~~ Source: Heim, Joe. "At William & Mary, a school for free and enslaved Black children is rediscovered". Washington Post. Kale, Wilford (10 February 2023). "How an English professor's search for poetry led to the discovery of the Bray School". The Virginia Gazette. Williamsburg, VA: Daily Press. Retrieved 13 February 2023.
- ALT1: ... that the Williamsburg Bray School (pictured)–the "oldest extant building in the United States dedicated to the education of Black children"–was moved a second time in February 2023? Source: Associated Press (11 February 2023). "Oldest schoolhouse for Black children in the country moved to Virginia museum". NBC News. Retrieved 14 February 2023.
- ALT2: ... that the Williamsburg Bray School (pictured) was opened at Benjamin Franklin's suggestion in what is now the "oldest extant building in the United States dedicated to the education of Black children"? Source: Wolfe, Brendan (7 September 2021). "Associates of Dr. Bray". Encyclopedia Virginia. Charlottesville, VA: Virginia Humanities. Retrieved 13 February 2023.
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Soheila Sokhanvari
- Comment: I wasn't precisely sure where to insert the parenthetical "(pictured)" in each hook, so I encourage suggestions on alternative locations should the image be promoted with a hook.

5x expanded by Pbritti (talk). Self-nominated at 22:37, 16 February 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Williamsburg Bray School; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy compliance:

Adequate sourcing:
Neutral:
Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing: - would like some rewording.

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: @Pbritti: Good expansion but earwig does seem to show some slight similarities to one of the sources. It isn't major but I would like some rewording to better reduce the percentage. Onegreatjoke (talk) 19:44, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Onegreatjoke: I know this is annoying but Earwig has been 504ing for me not matter what I do for the last couple days. Could you send the offending phrase for me to correct? ~ Pbritti (talk) 20:48, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Earwig is working for me now, so I'll go through and work to reduce the percentage (most seem to be false positives on names of entities like "Associates of Dr. Bray" and "military science department", so anticipate me only lowering it to ~15%.) ~ Pbritti (talk) 15:08, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Onegreatjoke: Ok, I have tried to knock down the percentage a bit but the overlap remains high due to organizational and personal names. If you think there are any remaining suspect phrases, please let me know; I'll happy rework them. ~ Pbritti (talk) 15:23, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't look like a problem anymore. Onegreatjoke (talk) 18:16, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Following a private, off-wiki message from the individual described in the first hook, he informed me that he was not in fact motivated by poetry in his search for 19th-century Williamsburg. Out of an abundance of caution, I have struck this first hook and offer the two ALTs as already approved. ~ Pbritti (talk) 20:50, 20 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Early history under 'Private residence and first move' section could use some better citations

The statement that talks about the Digges family:

"Dudley Digges's son, also named Dudley, died in the house in 1768; the elder Dudley died roughly three years later and passed the house to his surviving son Edward Digges."

isn't currently supported by any citation. Suspect if we dig into this, we are specifically talking about Dudley Digges (patriot) (son) and Cole Digges (burgess) (father), based on dates alone. I haven't personally been able to find a clear supporting source yet to verify that statement, and it doesn't help there is no less than three different Dudley Digges in the colonial history of that area. Would be great if someone could clarify. Jacobsatterfield (talk) 21:56, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Jacobsatterfield: The source for this statement was "Historic Structure Report for the Prince George Street House" (Ackermann & Meyers 2009). Unfortunately, the hosting website for this document was W&M Library's Special Collections, who possess the singularly least functional "searchable" database I have ever encountered. Rather than brute-forcing my way through their catalog, I have emailed the team at Special Collections about them sending over a PDF of the document. They'll hopefully reply Monday, as they usually have a decent response time. Perhaps resident Bray School expert VictPoets can also help. ~ Pbritti (talk) 01:01, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Splitting proposal

Suggestion: The current title of this article is Williamsburg Bray School, however this article is already much broader in scope than that topic. In the grander timeline, the school occupied the building discussed at length only definitively from 1763-1765 (possibly as early as 1760); roughly 5 years out of a 250+ year old structure. The school also existed separately from the house, both before and after (till 1774) those dates. The house has likewise had many other uses. It might be more coherent to organize one article about the historical house itself, and another article for the school.

The school article could expand on the later locations and associated persons that helped establish it and those that attended it. The house article might want to outline it's sections by chronological occupant (i.e. early colonial, Bray School, Digges family, Methodist Episcopal Church, William & Mary, etc). Those sections could refer to main articles (such as Williamsburg Bray School). Jacobsatterfield (talk) 15:10, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: I appreciate the interest in recognizing a distinction between the building and the institution, but the building was and is now again considered synonymous with the institution. On its own, the building would likely not meet the notability standard:

It was not cataloged in any of the standard reference texts on Williamsburg (Whiffen, Yetter/Lounsbury).
It is not included on the NHRP nor a state/local equivalent (the Virginia historical highway marker on the former site of the building deals with school).
All major published research and news coverage deals with the building as the school.

Splitting this subject in two doesn't strike me as increasing the value of our encyclopedic coverage. The building changed hands a few times, but it is solely notable as the school. ~ Pbritti (talk) 18:43, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support: Article in it's current form has as much historical information about the structure/house as it does details about it's use for five years as a notable school. I do think the location is notable by itself: Ackerman refers to it as the Prince George Street House, Meyers refers to it as the Dudley Digges House, and W&M refers to it as the the Bray-Digges House in many of it's own publications. Within the modern US, any ~250-year old colonial structure would generally be notable; this particular home just happens to be distinguished exceptionally by it's use for ~5 years as a school for black children in colonial Virginia. Even in current article form (and exclusive of any use as a school) this location would be older than some of the content currently listed in List of the oldest buildings in Virginia. The pattern in articles in the area appears to trend toward the location/structure as the article title, with subsections for particular eras/usages. See Geddy House, Bruton Parish Church, Brafferton (building), Governor's Palace (Williamsburg, Virginia), Wren Building, Wythe House, Brush-Everard House for examples, also others in Template:Colonial Williamsburg.

As a compromise position to splitting, I would support reorganizing the article to have chronological subsections for each historical era (one of which would certainly be the Bray School). Incoming links could then cleanly point to the appropriate subsection/era. However, I do support/agree that the Bray School is notable in and of itself (and had additional locations during it's history, hence the original split recommendation rather than demoting to a subsection of the structure/location article. Likewise, how the building was utilized for 225 years after the Bray School era seems peripheral to an article focused on the Bray School history of 1760-1774.) All that said, as the Colonial Williamsburg ownership has been presenting this structure as the Williamsburg Bray School recently (~ 2021), it might be acceptable to just lump this all together under that current moniker and restructure the article flow chronologically, with a bunch of disambigs or section redirects pointing to the other names throughout history.

Complicating matters is that this structure has been picked up and moved - twice. The current physical CW location is not the original location of the Bray School. Nothing is easy, is it? ;)

Greatly appreciate the effort that author @Pbritti has put into maturing this article, in both the School and building history. As Pbritti has had time at W&M, and I am a native of the nearby area, we are both personally familiar with the topic/area. While neutral in intent, it's possible we are unintentionally biased by prior knowledge or local media. Therefore unaffiliated editor inputs are requested on how to best organize this for a better read and maximum value for the general reader. Split? Reorganize chronologically? Leave as is? Thoughts? Jacobsatterfield (talk)