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Rh and character were certified to and it was declared that he had passed “through a regular course of academic studies’’ at what is now Washington and Lee University. In 1805 he returned to North Carolina, where he, in 1809 was made a licentiate in the Presbyterian Church and preached. His English was remarkably pure, his manner impressive, his explanations clear and concise. For a long time he taught school and had the best whites as pupils—a United States senator, the sons of a chief justice of North Carolina, a governor of the state and many others. Some of his pupils boarded in his family, and his school was regarded as the best in the State. “All accounts agree that John Chavis was a gentleman” and he was received socially among the best whites and asked to table. In 1830 he was stopped from preaching by the law. Afterward he taught school for free Negroes in Raleigh.

Henry Evans was a full-blooded Virgina free Negro, and was the pioneer of Methodism in Fayetteville, N. C. He found the Negroes there, about 1800, without religious instruction. He began preaching and the town council ordered him away; he continued and whites came to hear him. Finally the white auditors outnumbered the black, and sheds were erected for Negroes at the side of the church. The gathering became a regular