Generation IV

James Revis, born on December 8, 1873 (pictured top/bottom left), and Nannie Brown (born abt 1881, pictured top/bottom right), married on December 20, 1900, in Lenoir County, NC. An elder, turned ancestor (Bud James), protested an oral history that James Revis was Haitian and came to North Carolina as a free man to work tobacco farms, and returning to Haiti after cropping season. While evidence has not been found yet, of James being born or living in Haiti, nestled in Durham rests the Hayti District. Flourishing from the 1880s to the 1940s, Hayti is considered “The Heart of Durham’s Black Wall Street” and coined by W.E.B. DuBois as the “Negro business mecca of the South”.  James (24yrs old) and his brother Horace (38yrs old) are listed on the 1900 census as “day laborers”, who could read & write. Additionally, located on the same census, Junious Brown, Edgar Brown, Della (Dixon) Brown, Thomas Brown & Nannie Brown, are also listed. Nannie Brown, at the time is 17 years old at the time, and is listed that she can read, write, and has 4 years of education.

1900 U.S. Census: James & Horace #13 & #14, Brown Family #18-22