The Evans Family: Free People of Color in Colonial North Carolina
The Homeplace
In 1877, a young couple married near what is now the Research Triangle of North Carolina — Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. She was the daughter of an Indian woman from North Carolina, and her husband was the grandson of Free People of Color who first moved to North Carolina from the Virginia Colony in the 17th Century. According to some family lore, they traded a cow for a plot of land. Those stories don’t always line up with each other, or with documentary evidence, but they do attest to the love that the family has for our heritage and our people. documents that their children became successful, forming the nexus of a small, tight-knit community.
No matter how far their grandchildren dispersed, they remained connected to their rural “homeplace.” I was privileged to spend almost four decades listening to some of those stories from my own grandmother. I hope to share more in the future, particularly during the America 250 commemoration of our democracy. I hope it takes some curious cousins to North Carolina.
Read the well-researched articles by Barb Wetmore and Kate Biddle in the Winter 2025 Newsletter of the the Friends of the Page-Walker Hotel, Cary’s historical society. These articles incorporate and build upon extensive research done by Kate Biddle, Peggy Van Scoyoc, Carla Michaels. Kerry Mead was the President of the Friends of the Page-Walker.
For further reading: Desegregating Cary by Peggy Van Scoyoc
https://friendsofpagewalker.wildapricot.org/newsletters
