John Chavis


 * This article is for the black educator. For the football coach of the same name, see John Chavis (American football).

John Chavis (c. 1763-June 15, 1838 ) was a black educator and Presbyterian minister in the American South during the early 19th century.

Early life
The exact date of Chavis's birth is not known. It is believed that he was born in either 1762 or 1763. One source claims he was born on October 18, 1763, but with no evidence given.

Information about Chavis's early life is scant as well, with few records to document it. It is believed that he may have been the 'John Chavis' who was employed as an indentured servant by a Halifax lawyer named James Milner. A 1773 inventory of Milner's estate does list an "indentured servant named John Chavis." Since Milner possessed a large library, it is likely that Chavis received some schooling during his period of service.

Military service
Chavis served as a soldier during the American Revolutionary War. He enlisted in December 1778 and served in the 5th Virginia Regiment for three years. Captain Mayo Carrington of the regiment wrote in a bounty warrant dated March 1783 that Chavis had "faithfully fulfilled [his duties] and is thereby entitled to all immunities granted to three year soldiers."

A 1789 tax list of Mecklenburg County, Virginia, shows that he was listed as a free black man owning one horse. He had married a woman named Sarah Frances Anderson, and they had one son, Anderson Chavis. In 1789, he was employed by Robert Greenwood's estate as tutor to Greenwood's orphans.

Education
Chavis arrived at the Liberty Hall Academy in Lexington, Virginia in 1795, one year prior to George Washington's gift of 100 shares of James River Company Stock. He was still a student when the institution changed its name to Washington Academy. (Washington Academy would change its name a third time long after Chavis left the school, becoming Washington and Lee University.)

Prior to 1795, Chavis had resided in New Jersey, where he had taken private classes under John Witherspoon in preparation for entering the Presbyterian ministry. In the recorded minutes of the meeting of the trustees of the College of New Jersey (later to become Princeton University) dated September 26, 1792, there is a recommendation by Reverend John Blair that "Mr. Todd Henry, a Virginian, and John Chavis, a free black man of that state, ... be received" on the school's Leslie Fund. Chavis transferred to Liberty Hall Academy after Witherspoon's death in 1794.

Ministry
On November 19, 1800 Chavis completed with high honors a rigorous theological examination that began on June 11, 1800. On this date, he was also granted a license to preach by the Presbytery of Lexington in Virginia.

Six months later, with high character recommendations from the Presbytery of Lexington, Chavis was transferred to work under the Hanover Presbytery.

In April 1802, Chavis had applied for freedmen's papers and received them from Rockbridge County Court. It was recorded that "said [John] Chavis has been known to the Court for several years ... and that he has always ... been considered as a freeman, and they believe him to be such, and that he has always while in the county conducted himself in a decent orderly and respectable manner, and also that he has been a student at Washington Academy [sic] where they believe he whent [sic] through a regular course of academical [sic] studies."

Between 1801 and 1807, Chavis served as a circuit riding missionary for the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church to slaves and free blacks in the states of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. He also converted whites as well.

Chavis came to Raleigh, North Carolina sometime between 1807 and 1809, where he was licensed to preach the Christian Gospel by the Orange Presbytery. While he was not given a parish, he continued to preach to Black and White congregations in Granville, Orange, and Wake Counties. Some of the white congregations included slaveholders.

Educator
In 1808, Chavis opened a school in his home where he taught both white and black children. He placed ads in the Raleigh Register to encourage enrollment. At first he taught both races together, but after some white parents objected, he taught white children during the day and black children in the evenings. He charged white students $2.50 per quarter, and black students $1.75 per quarter. As an educator, Chavis taught full time and instructed his college bound white students in Latin and Greek, which were required study in the colleges and universities of that time.

His school was described as one of the best in the state. Students from some of the most prominent white families in the South studied at Chavis' school. His students includes Priestly H. Mangum, brother of Senator Willie P. Mangum; Archibald E. Henderson and John L. Henderson, sons of Chief Justice Henderson; Governor Charles Manly; The Reverend William Harris; Dr. James L. Wortham; the Edwardses, Enlows (Enloes), Hargroves, and Horners; and Abraham Rencher, Minister of Portugal and Territorial Governor of New Mexico.

Personal life
Chavis maintained a friendship with one of his white students, Senator Willie P. Mangum. For many years, they conducted a correspondence where Chavis often criticized the senator's political positions. Chavis, it seems, supported the abolition of slavery, had a great dislike for President Andrew Jackson and was opposed to the states' rights advocacy of Mangum and his colleagues. According to some writers " In 1837, Chavis published 'An Essay on the Atonement,' though no copies are known to have survived." The previous statement is erroneous because John Chavis's Letter Upon the Doctrine of the Extent of the Atonement of Christ was found by Helen Chavis Othow, Ph.D who published John Chavis: African American Patriot, Preacher, Teacher, and Mentor 1763 - 1838 (McFarland Publishers, 2001) at the library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A copy of Chavis's sermon is included in the study with an Introduction by Dr. Othow.. Rev. Chavis had appealed to the Orange Presbytery to assist with the publication of his sermon, but they refused stating that it was a subject that had been adequately discussed and would be of no interest to the public. However, he went ahead and published his sermon in 1837 through J.Gales and Son in Raleigh, North Carolina. Although the subject of the Atonement of Christ had been written about by many theologians, no one had written on the subject with such clarity and enthusiasm as John Chavis had done.

After Nat Turner, an educated slave and preacher in southern Virginia, led a bloody rebellion in 1831 that saw the murder of dozens of white men, women and children, slave-holding states quickly passed laws that forbade all blacks to preach. Although Chavis was forced to give up preaching and teaching school, the presbytery continued to pay Chavis $50 a year until his death to support him and his wife. The presbytery even continued payments to his wife after his death until 1842.Chavis's wife told the presbytery that she would no longer need their contributions, because her family could take care of her and her children. Before his death, Rev. Chavis left the Orange Presbytery and joined the Roanoke Presbytery.

Rev. Chavis did not perceive of money borrowed from his friends as charity but as an agreement between equals.

Death
Chavis died in June 1838 in circumstances that remain unclear. According to his biographer, Helen Chavis Othow, the oral tradition suggests that Chavis was killed by whites who didn't want him educating blacks. Local legend says that Chavis was beaten to death in his home. In 1986 the John Chavis Historical Society was founded by Helen Chavis Othow. One of the goals of the society was to discover the gravesite of John Chavis. The first author who wrote a book length biography of John Chavis was Dr. George Clayton Shaw, Founder of Timothy Darling Presbyterian Church in Oxford, North Carolina in 1888 and Mary Potter Academy, the first high school for African Americans in 1889. He published a book entitled John Chavis in 1931. In the biography, Dr. Shaw stated that Rev. Chavis was buried on the land of Willie P. Mangum, Chavis's former student. After numerous searches for the gravesite, the old cemetery was discovered by members of the John Chavis Historical Society in 1988. Dr. Othow located what is believed to be the gravesite and appealed to the state archaeologist to investigate the site but as of this date (2013) the appeal has been in vain. The Old Cemetery was added to the map of Hill Forest (the former Mangum plantation) by Michael Hill, historian of the North Carolina Archives.

Legacy
Chavis is the subject of historical markers in both North Carolina and Virginia.

Both Chavis Heights apartments and Chavis Park in Raleigh, North Carolina, are named after him, as are a residential house and board room at Washington and Lee University. Several schools are, as well. One of the lessons to be gained from John Chavis's The Extent of the Atonement is that Christ died to save all people, regardless of their race or creed, free or slave. He also states that all people have freedom of will. He believed that the previous discussions of the Atonement of Christ were manipulated due to prejudice. He makes the following famous statement, "Thus we have a demonstrative evidence of the fatal and dangerous effects of prejudice - that it blinds the mind and forbids free and open investigation after truth".