During these years an exceptionally bright Negro was serving as a teacher not of his own race but of the most aristocratic white people of North Carolina.  This educator was a freeman named John Chavis.  He was born probably near Oxford, Granville County, about 1763.  Chavis was a full-blooded Negro of dark brown color.  Early attracting the attention of his white neighbors, he was sent to Princeton “to see if a Negro would take a collegiate education.”  His rapid advancement under Dr. Witherspoon “soon convinced his friends that the experiment would issue favorable."[1] There he took rank as a good Latin and a fair Greek scholar.

[Footnote 1:  Bassett, Slavery in North Carolina, p. 73.]

From Princeton he went to Virginia to preach to his own people.  In 1801 he served at the Hanover Presbytery as a “riding missionary under the direction of the General Assembly."[1] He was then reported also as a regularly commissioned preacher to his people in Lexington.  In 1805 he returned to North Carolina where he often preached to various congregations.[2] His career as a clergyman was brought to a close in 1831 by the law enacted to prevent Negroes from preaching.[3] Thereafter he confined himself to teaching, which was by far his most important work.  He opened a classical school for white persons, “teaching in Granville, Wake, and Chatham Counties."[4] The best people of the community patronized this school.  Chavis counted among his students W.P.  Mangum, afterwards United States Senator, P.H.  Mangum, his brother, Archibald and John Henderson, sons of Chief Justice Henderson, Charles Manly, afterwards Governor of that commonwealth, and Dr. James L. Wortham of Oxford, North Carolina.[5]

[Footnote 1:  Ibid., p. 74; and Baird, A Collection, etc., pp. 816-817.]

[Footnote 2:  Paul C. Cameron, a son of Judge Duncan of North Carolina, said:  “In my boyhood life at my father’s home I often saw John Chavis, a venerable old negro man, recognized as a freeman and as a preacher or clergyman of the Presbyterian Church.  As such he was received by my father and treated with kindness and consideration, and respected as a man of education, good sense and most estimable character.”  Mr. George Wortham, a lawyer of Granville County, said:  “I have heard him read and explain the Scriptures to my father’s family repeatedly.  His English was remarkably pure, containing no ‘negroisms’; his manner was impressive, his explanations clear and concise, and his views, as I then thought and still think, entirely orthodox.  He was said to have been an acceptable preacher, his sermons abounding in strong common sense views and happy illustrations, without any effort at oratory or sensational appeals to the passions of his hearers.”  See Bassett, Slavery in N.C., pp. 74-75.]

[Footnote 3:  See Chapter VII.]

[Footnote 4:  Bassett, Slavery in North Carolina, p. 74.]