Terry, 

The free black Rozario family goes back into the 18th century in Williamsburg and York County. Elizabeth Rozario (free) was the head of her own three-person household in Williamsburg in 1782, for example. We/you might be able to identify the person on whose behalf James Madison wrote the letter referenced below.

Linda Rowe
Historian
Department of Training and Historical Research
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation



-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Terry Meyers
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2012 8:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] First Black Colleges in Virginia--Related Stuff

	Slightly tangential, but still of interest perhaps in terms of blacks and college education in VA is this letter in 1807 concerning a free black who sought permission to sit in on lectures in science at William and Mary:

	https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/bitstream/handle/10288/16301/
MadisonRozarro.pdf?sequence=4

	 Somewhat related is the story of George Greenhow, a free black who was the janitor at William and Mary in antebellum days.  Greenhow liked to boast (with a fine sense of irony, obviously) that he was "the only negro ever educated at William & Mary"- he had been taught to read and write by one of the students in return for Mrs.  
Greenhow's doing the student's laundry  (see a letter discovered by my colleague  Louise Kale: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Archives, Records of the Research Department, Folder Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin,
1933:35-39: n.d., W. T. Greenhow to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., July 9, 1928.  A transcript is at the Rockefeller Library).

	Also somewhat related:  the Colonial Williamsburg and William and Mary Field Schools this summer have finished; analysis of the artifacts at the presumed site of the Bray School, a school associated with the College from 1760 for the religious education of  
black children (free and enslaved), is proceeding.   Nothing  
definitive can yet be said, but the slate pencils, clay marbles, and a tiny doll are at least compatible with a school's being sited where the documents suggest it was--not finding such things would have complicated that argument.

	http://www.history.com/news/archaeologists-seek-evidence-of-oldest-
black-school

	All of this related to the College's Lemon Project:

		http://www.wm.edu/sites/lemonproject/?svr=web

------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------
Terry L. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, College of William  
and Mary, Williamsburg Virginia  23187				757-221-3932

		http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/tlmeye/

		http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html
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        Have we got a college?  Have we got a football team?....  
Well, we can't afford both.   Tomorrow we start tearing down the  
college.
             															 --Groucho Marx, in "Horse Feathers."





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