Paul Finkelman wrote:
although there were VERY VERY few of them. The estimate of free blacks in 1780 is about 2,000

We should also consider that in 1790 nearly the entire "other free" population of North Carolina originated in Virginia, many living just across the state line in Hertford, Northampton, Halifax, and Granville counties. Most of these free families owned their own land and were on good terms with neighboring white farmers. About eight percent of the free population of Northampton County, N.C., were "other free" persons in 1800-1810. This could not have gone unnoticed in the white and slave communities in adjoining Virginia counties.

"Coloured" Doctor Thomas Stewart, a wealthy slaveowner of Dinwiddie County, was mentioned in the Virginia Gazette in 1784, and Jacob Chavis owned over 1,000 acres in Mecklenburg County in 1765. In 1719 a white worker on the plantation of Samuel Harwood, Jr., of Charles City County deposed that a runaway "Mallatto Man Slave" named Jack had made it all the way to South Carolina where he went by the name of John Bunch, a free African American landowner from the New Kent County area.
Paul 

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