Terry
That story about the Wren Building standing on the site of a ram dating to the 1620s is news to me, as well. I know that archaeological work/monitoring has been done in several areas of the old campus, most notably the Brafferton and the Wren Yard projects, and I don't recall any evidence of previous domestic occupations in those areas. You may check with the William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research to see if that is indeed the case as I believe they were responsible for both of those projects and for monitoring earth moving projects throughout the campus.
-----Original Message-----
From: Meyers, Terry L <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2023 9:25 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [VA-HIST] Burial Ground for Those W&M Enslaved?
Although I’d long supposed that someplace on W&M’s original 330 acres is a burial ground for those the College enslaved over some 170 years, I’m now of a mind that we more likely buried our enslaved at a largely forgotten potter’s field of some sort near the Williamsburg Inn, as I explore in
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3074&context=aspubs
But I’ve also found an account in the student newspaper, the Flat Hat (April 10, 1925; p. 1d<http://hdl.handle.net/10288/4841>), of a burial or burials off the north west corner of the Wren Building speculatively linked to a “tradition” that there was a farm there dating from ca. 1627.
I know of no such “tradition."
If there was a farm there, the place might be a family burial plot. It not a farm, it might conceivably be a burial ground for enslaved.
Is it possible to determine whether a farm was there from before 1693 or not?
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Terry L. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, Emeritus, The College of William and Mary, in Virginia, Williamsburg 23187
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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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Terry L. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, Emeritus, The College of William and Mary, in Virginia, Williamsburg 23187
Offset Your Carbon Footprint? Choose at https://tinyurl.com/5546274z
Control Methane? https://earthworks.org ————————————————————————————————————————————————————
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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