After the Northern capture of Roanoke Island in February 1862, more than 3,000 former slaves arrived on the island as Union armies advanced south and refugee slaves followed. At the direction of Maj. Gen. John G. Foster, Army chaplain Horace James organized a formal colony on the northern end of the island, where one-acre lots were provided for about 600 families and schools, mills, and houses were built. By the war’s end, almost 6,000 former slaves lived in Freedmen’s Town, where they experienced liberty for the first time on the north end of Roanoke Island, with marriages legalized and equal rights and privileges granted in courts of law.