Robert J. Holmes enlisted as a musician in Company B of the 16th Connecticut Volunteers, likely as a fifer. He was captured on the same day as Harrison Woodford, another Avon native, and imprisoned at Andersonville until released on December 11, 1864. In later years, Holmes moved to West Avon, where he made his home on West Avon Road and became a member of West Avon Congregational Church. He owned a grist mill and a saw mill in the Sleepy Hollow section of West Avon. In 1907, he traveled back to Georgia with other members of the Connecticut 16th Regiment to attend the dedication of a memorial to their fellow soldiers. At that ceremony, each survivor was given a cane made from the stockade of the prison.

This list is from research done in 2024.

• 1830 Census: There are three households of free people of African descent. These are headed by Asahel Williams, Samuel Murray, and Correl Higby/Higley. Each household has children, and in the case of the former two spouses.
• 1840 Census: There are three households of free people of African descent headed by Francis Woodford, Charles Steel, and Henry Williams. Additional people are noted in each household, including wives and children.
• 1850 Census: This is the first census that notes specifically bi-racial households. Among them are Alexander Williams (a 43-year-old farmer, along with his wife Martha and son Samuel, who attended school), and James Whitford (a 68-year-old laborer and his wife Artemisia, 55). Lewis Prine, a 24-year-old man of African descent, worked as a laborer and lived in the house of English immigrant and axe maker Thomas Parkington.
• 1860 Census: Alexander Williams was working as a tin peddler and living with his wife, Martha. Joseph Williams, a 60-year-old man of African descent, worked as a servant in the home of 45-year-old Caucasian peddler, Homer Chidsey.
• 1870 Census: As noted above, Leverett Holden and Martha Williams are noted on this record. Two people of African descent – 23-year-old hostler Israel Grant and 16-year-old domestic servant Celia Ray lived in the house of D. M. Bartlett, who was a 42-year-old Caucasian journalist.
• 1880 Census: James Anderson, a 28-year-old laborer, is listed as living with his “wife,” Augusta, who was 16. Both are listed as bi-racial. Watts Cambridge/Cumbridge, a 29-year-old farm laborer of African descent, lived in the house of Caucasian farmer Lucious Woodford. There was also a household of people of African descent headed by Norman Hector, a 38-year-old laborer from Massachusetts, with his wife Selina, and children Clara and Minnie. Hector also had a boarder of African descent, 22-year-old laborer Bradford Sherman. Martha Williams is also living independently.
• 1900 Census: William Jurriett/Burritt, a 26-year-old stone mason from Virginia, is living in Avon. While he is listed as being married, it does not appear his wife is living with him. Frank Grant, a 40-year-old man who worked as a farm laborer, is living in the house of Caucasian farmer Hurbert Royce. Samuel Hutton, a 16-year-old day laborer at the fuse shop, came to Avon from Florida and lived in the house of John Taylor, a Caucasian
  day laborer at the Fuse factory.
• 1910 Census: Charles Peters, a 59-year-old bi-racial farm laborer, lives with a Caucasian housekeeper, widow Ellen Calhoun. Edward Katzung, son of German immigrants, is married to a bi-racial woman named Abigail and has two sons. Charles Hyde, a 56-year-old bi-racial widow who works as a farm laborer, lives in the house of Caucasian farmer Newton Woodruft. Anna Lave/Save, a 27-year-old woman of African descent from Delaware (parents were from Australia), is working as a domestic servant in the house of Edward Kellogg.
• 1920 Census: This survey of Avon includes a 28-person community of tobacco workers, all of whom are listed as bi-racial. Subsequent records list them all as “black.”
• 1930 Census: Edward Katzung and his wife are still in Avon, although his wife is listed not as bi-racial, but black on this survey. There is also a household of people of African descent headed by James Johnson, a truck driver for a Coal and Feed Company. He lived with his wife and son.
• 1940 Census: William L. Spivey lived on Cider Brook Road. He was 27 years old, originally from Georgia and worked as a caretaker on a private estate. He lived with his wife, Pearl, and their three children. Alvenia Cambridge, a 41-year-old woman of African descent, lived in the house of Caucasian securities broker, Fred Wallace.
  1950: None

Edgar Woodford (1824-1862)
Surveyor, Farmer, Abolitionist

The Hartford Courant, July 11, 1913, p. 11

Written and delivered by Dr. E. W. Kellogg at the Memorial Service for Edgar Woodford, at the West Avon Cemetery, Sunday, May 26, 1913:

Early in life, [Edgar Woodford] was captain of the local militia company in this town and vicinity, and I remember seeing [him] drilling this company upon the Green near the church at East Avon [the Avon Congregational Church], when I was a small lad.

… Mr. Woodford was an abolitionist of a pronounced type…. He had a strong desire to enlist but could not conscientiously do so under existing conditions. He did, however, gather a squad of young men whom he drilled in the manual of arms at stated intervals in the lower part of the church. I was present at one of those drills. When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he immediately enlisted as a private soldier….

Edgar Woodford went to Kansas in 1856, with the settlers of the Connecticut Colony in Kansas. They hoped to make Kansas a free state by settling, and voting against slavery.

Dr. Kellogg had Woodford’s diary, which stated that before leaving for the Civil War, he attended church at the West Avon Cong. Church….

The next day he attended a town meeting at East Avon [at the Avon Congregational Church] and the following day came the heart breaking farewell to his beloved family and other dear ones. He left for Hartford and New York. He sailed for Florida, September 1, 1862.

Edgar Woodford enlisted in the 7th CT Volunteer Infantry, and died in Hilton Head, S.C. in 1862.