On April 20, 2015, I asked the list for help with a question. whether Jefferson had in mind in 1778 at least a modicum of education for free black children when he wrote that  “At these schools all the free children, male and female, resident within the respective hundred, shall be intitled to receive tuition gratis, for the term of three years, and as much longer, at their private expence, as their parents, guardians or friends, shall think proper….”

			http://listlva.lib.va.us/scripts/wa.exe?A2=VA-HIST;2111826b.1504

            The ensuing thread was enlightening, and convinced me that yes, Jefferson did have that in mind in using the phrase “all the free children.”

            I’ve followed up the phrase itself and found a 1720 law pertaining to the registry of births and deaths where “free” appears to apply to both white and black children:

            An abridgement of the publick laws of Virginia, in force and use, June 10.1720. To which is added, for the ease of the justices and military ...: Virginia.: London, 1722. 202 pp.  p. 134

                        An Act for Registering Births, Christenings and Deaths

The parent of a free child, and owner or overseer of a slave child shall register the same with the minister or reader within twenty days after the birth…..

The master of a family where a free person shall die and the owner or overseer of a slave that shall die will register such death with a minister or reader within  twenty days after….

The minister or clerk shall keep an exact register of the names of free children and their parents; the names of the owners of slaves born and the sex of the children; the names of free persons dying, 			and the names of the owners of slaves dying…..





	   This lends support to the compelling evidence list members provided, all of which expands more explicitly what is known about Jefferson and black education as at

				https://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/question-slave-education
I still can’t determine the influence, if any, on Jefferson of W&M’s affiliation with a school for the religious education of free and black children, but I continue to keep an eye out, and continue to think that he must at least have known of the school.

My article, btw, on the school and W&M is, I am pleased to find, now available on-line: “Benjamin Franklin, the College of William and Mary, and the Williamsburg Bray School,” Anglican and Episcopal History,  79: 4 (December 2010), 368-393. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/42612683

			I conclude there that W&M, alma mater (and final resting place, in 1939) of Thomas Roderick Dew, was the first institution of higher learning in America to concern itself with the education of blacks (I have yet to make the case that it is a HBUC).

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Terry L. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English Emeritus, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg Virginia 
 23187 

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

http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html <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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