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 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.
Read more about this topic: John Chavis
Famous quotes containing the words military and/or service:
“Who are we? And for what are we going to fight? Are we the titled slaves of George the Third? The military conscripts of Napoleon the Great? Or the frozen peasants of the Russian Czar? No—we are the free born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world; and the only people on earth who possess rights, liberties, and property which they dare call their own.”
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