Pvt. Leverett Holden, a resident of Avon and veteran of the U.S. Civil War, served in the 29th Connecticut Infantry Regiment, Colored, from 1863 through 1865. He was one of over 1,300 who joined. His enlistment documents show he was born in Vernon, CT, about 1825. The 1850 U.S. Census shows he was working and living at the Wadsworth Inn, now a house at 1234 Prospect Street in Hartford. According to a late-19th-century Avon resident's diary, Holden lived in Avon in the mid-1850s. He served with the 29th Connecticut during several engagements in 1864 in Virginia, such as at Petersburg, Chaffins Farm, Darbytown Road, and Kell House.

Upon returning to Connecticut with the regiment in late 1865, he resumed his life in Avon. A memorial stone commemorating his service, provided by the State of Connecticut, was placed in the East Avon Cemetery behind the Avon Congregational Church on May 29, 1890.

A Headstone Rededication Service was held on February 22, 2014.  The service was adapted from the 1917 Service for the use of the Grand Army of the Republic; it was used to dedicate a headstone for a Civil War veteran.

A pdf copy of that Service can be downloaded here. 

Terri Wilson, President of the Historical Society, has been researching and speaking on Leverett since 2010.  For all the years of her research, Terri was never able to find if he had any marriages or descendants. However, in May 2025, two very skilled genealogists, John and Erica Mills, decided to take a closer look, and what they found was astonishing. Not only did Leverett have family around him, but he also has descendants in the form of 3rd and 4th great-grandnieces and nephews who live in CT and North Carolina!

During the State of Connecticut's 150th commemoration of the Civil War (between 2011 and 2015), questions were raised as to whether this stone marked his grave or was just a memorial to Pvt. Holden. In December 2023, with the help of the Avon Historical Society, the East Avon Cemetery Association applied for and received a grant from the State Historic Preservation Office of the Department of Economic and Community Development to have a geophysical survey for human burials done to provide the answer. Ground penetrating radaring was conducted in September 2024 around the memorial stone, which showed no indication of a grave at that site. Therefore, the memorial stone is now confirmed to be in honor of Pvt. Holden's service in the U.S. Civil War.

If you are interested in learning more about this research, you can download the pdf of the ground penetrating radar report.

A ceremony to formally acknowledge the site on the Connecticut Freedom Trail was held on June 2, 2025 at his memorial stone. The audience was then invited to the church for presentations at 7:00 pm. Guest presenters were Tammy Denease, Outreach Coordinator for the CT Freedom Trail; John Mills, historian of the 29th CT; and Andre Keitt, CT Storyteller, who explained the meaning of Juneteenth.

This amazing event can be viewed via this Youtube Link.

Images courtesy of Deb Key Imagery.

From research in 2016 by an Avon resident:

The Abolitionist Movement to emancipate the slaves in Connecticut probably began in the years following the Revolutionary War, when humanitarians across the state struggled to apply the statement in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” to those in bondage. If this statement were true, then a way had to be found to abolish the dreadful practice of slavery.

Horatio Strother writes in his book The Underground Railroad in Connecticut: “After the Revolution, that basic lesson in freedom, the (Connecticut) General Assembly moved further toward universal emancipation. A law of 1784 provided that no Negro or mulatto born in Connecticut after March 1 of that year was to be held as a slave after reaching the age of twenty-five. Further measures soon followed this law in the same direction. An enactment of May 1792 gave teeth to the 1784 law by defining penalties for its violation; anyone who removed from Connecticut a slave who was entitled to freedom at twenty-five would be punished by a “fine of $334, half of which should go to the plaintiff and half to the State.” The same session of the Assembly also enacted that all slaves between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five were entitled to freedom. A measure of 1797 took an additional step, decreeing that no Negro or mulatto born after August of that year should remain a slave after reaching the age of twenty-one.”

Consequently, the number of slaves in the state declined from 951 in 1800 to 23 in 1830. Although no slaves were living in Hartford County at that time, Fran MacKie writes in her book, Avon, Connecticut, an historical story, that Shubael and Romanta Tillotson, whose family owned a large farm on the east side of Lovely Street, “had a sugar plantation in New River Parish, Ascension County, Louisiana, and spent their summers at the family home in Avon, bringing with them twenty or thirty of the ninety slaves they owned to harvest tobacco. They maintained a school for their slaves and are said to have treated them with kindness. However, they were threatened with excommunication from the West Avon Congregational Church because they were slave-owners.”

Meanwhile, the number of African Americans fleeing the brutality of slavery below the Mason-Dixon Line began to increase. By the late 1830s, the abolitionists had developed a series of escape routes and hiding places to help the fugitives get to Canada. After the American Revolution, Canada viewed the United States as “the enemy”, and escaped slaves were never returned to the enemy country. Twenty years after the American Revolution, Canada abolished slavery and became the destination of the journey to freedom.

The escape routes became known as the Underground Railroad. However, it was neither a train with tracks nor was it underground. The name came from an incident in 1831 when a slave named Tice Davids eluded his owner by swimming the Ohio River and disappearing on the other side. His owner searched and searched, but he was unable to find Davids. He glumly concluded that Davids must have gotten away by an “underground road”. Railroads were the technological wonder of the era, and it did not take long for “road” to become “railroad”.

The abolitionists who “worked” on the railroad continued the jargon by calling themselves agents, conductors, stationmasters, and stockholders. A stationmaster usually fed and housed the “passengers” until they were turned over to the agents or conductors who escorted them along the “railroad tracks”. The stockholders were the organizers and actually advertised in newspapers to notify the stationmasters that “human merchandise” would be arriving. One such ad said, “Hold on to Your Stock!”, encouraging the abolitionists to keep the faith and to hold on to their hope.

The Underground Railroad was a clandestine organization, and no one used their given names because some of their activities were outside the law. Abolitionists were very unpopular, and they were not always treated well by their neighbors or the authorities. Only the most important stationmaster knew the names of the stationmasters in neighboring towns.

Pastors may have preached openly about the evils of slavery, but even some of them were dismissed by their parishes. Fran MacKie writes that “West Avon Congregational Church members considered proposals ‘opposing the baleful system of slave holding’ in 1855 and 1856, but no action was taken. However, a majority voted in 1858, ‘the voluntary enslavement of one portion of the human race by another is a violation of the law of love and, therefore, a sin against which the church of God should everywhere bear distinct testimony.’ But there were church leaders who did not agree; two deacons immediately resigned, and one appointed successor requested to be excused from serving.” Prof. Strother points out that in Mystic and Naugatuck, people carried squirt guns so they could squirt ardent abolitionists when they became overly zealous about their convictions.

Farmington, Connecticut, was considered the “grand central station” of the Underground Railroad because all the “tracks” seemed to lead to this town. If a slave could escape the plantation and make it to the border states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, he had a good chance of finding abolitionists willing to help him. Slaves from the Southeastern states headed north to Pennsylvania and from there to Philadelphia and New York City; those from the other Southern states went north to Ohio and on through Michigan to Canada. They had no maps, so at night they used the North Star to guide them.

Along the way, they depended upon the kindness of people for food, shelter, and the name of the next stationmaster. Some came to Connecticut by boat, landing in New Haven or Old Lyme, while others walked from New York. The main routes in Connecticut were Wilton to Plymouth to Farmington; New Haven to Southington to Farmington; New Haven to Meriden to New Britain to Farmington; and Old Lyme to East Haddam to Glastonbury to Hartford and then to either Farmington or Bloomfield.
Avon was on the “main line” from Farmington, straight through to Simsbury and then on to Granby, crossing over into Massachusetts at Westfield. From there, the line went to Northampton and on to Canada through Vermont.

It was a dangerous passage, and both the conductors and their charges lived in fear of being exposed. Most “passengers” on the railroad were taken only a distance of 10 to 30 miles each night before being turned over to the next stationmaster. The choice of the route taken and of the mode of transportation was often changed to ensure the safety of all. Traveling at night, staying in way stations during the day, was best. Hay wagons, where people could be concealed in compartments under a load of hay, proved to be very good hiding places when being moved. Others simply walked at night, either alone or guided by a conductor to the next station. Some traveled by boat.

The preferred routes from Farmington to Avon were either Waterville Road (Route 10) or the Farmington River. The Farmington Canal operated until 1848, but it probably was not used because inspections of the canal boats were made at different locks; plus, it was not open during the night, when most of the moves were made. The Farmington Canal Railroad was operating in the 1850s, but it is not known if this was used by the Underground Railroad. There was also an alternate route, as Fran MacKie points out, that was used by one of Farmington’s most famous conductor’s, Elijah Lewis. He “is said to have escorted a fugitive ‘along the high road to the Deer Cliff Farm’ in Avon and from there to Simsbury”.

All this secrecy meant that there are very few written records about the abolitionists in Avon. What is known is that in February 1838, 16 men from Avon signed a full-page ad in the anti-slavery broadside, “The Emancipator”, calling people to an anti-slavery convention to be held in Hartford on February 28, 1838. The men who signed the broadside were William Brown, Hector Chidsey, John Chidsey, Francis H. Coe, Samuel Dickinson, Phineas Gabriel, Gideon Goodrich, J. G. Hubbard, Bela Crocker Kellogg, Isaac Osborn, Elizur Porter, Romanta Porter, Seth Soper, Levi Thompson, Ashbel Webster, and Amasa Woodford. This was a very brave thing to do. For every person who hated slavery, there was someone who was pro-slavery.

Phineas Gabriel, one of the men who signed the ad, lived in a house that is still standing on West Main Street across from what is now the gazebo on the Avon Town Green. He made his living as a cobbler, making shoes and boots. He may also have been an agent or conductor for the Underground Railroad, but he was definitely an abolitionist.

In 1896, his son Oliver Gabriel sent a letter to W. H. Siebert, who was collecting information for his book The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, published in 1898, corroborating his father’s involvement in the Abolitionist Movement:

Dear Sir,
In reply to your letter of inquiry some days ago, I would say that the following names are suggested as having been the six old-line abolitionists in this town (Avon) …. Amasa Woodford, Romeo Andrews, John Chidsey, Phineas Gabriel, Bela Kellogg, John Willard.
These people are all dead. About the Underground R.R. I am a son of the above named Phineas Gabriel and within my remembrance can recollect of fugitive slaves who were on their way to Canada from the South having stopped in this town over night and of their having been assisted with food, clothing, shelter and God-speed. I was young at the time but can remember the old abolitionists all flocked around to see them. As to the so called Underground R.R. I have no knowledge and cannot give you any information concerning it.
I have the honor to be
Cordially yours,

Oliver Gabriel
Postmaster
Avon, Conn.

Another signer of the ad, Bela Crocker Kellogg (1811 – 1892), lived in a house two doors to the west of Phineas Gabriel. He was the son of the first pastor of the Avon Congregational Church. Fran MacKie writes, “ Mr. Bela Kellogg (1780 – 1831) and his family still found time to help strangers. On January 8, 1829, as the son was reading to his father from the Anti-Masonic Intelligencer, they were interrupted by the entrance of a very ragged and cold black man. “He came to the fire…and we let him stay with us all night as the weather was somewhat severe out,” Bela wrote. “We have the pleasure of entertaining black as well as white,” he added.” Although Pastor Bela Kellogg died in 1831, it must be assumed that his son Bela Crocker Kellogg was influenced by his father’s kindness.

Bela Crocker Kellogg served his community as Postmaster and Judge of Probate; and when he died in 1892, his obituary contained the following, “He was an anti-slavery man when “abolitionist” was an opprobrious (disrespectful) epithet and voted for James G. Birney (Birney was the Liberty Party’s anti-slavery candidate for President in 1840) when the strongest faith dared not hope for the victories which gave him joy while yet in the prime of his active life. In every relation of life he was a faithful, patriotic, Christian gentleman.”

What is known of the other signers is sketchy: John Chidsey lived close to both the Gabriel and Kellogg homes on West Main Street; Samuel Dickenson lived two houses to the west of Bela Kellogg; Gideon Goodrich lived on West Avon Road; Elizur Porter owned a wagon shop on Lovely Street; Amasa Woodford (1808 - ?) acted as the moderator of the first election of selectmen in 1830 where Romanta Porter was chosen a selectmen; and Ashbel Webster lived on Nod Road. Nothing is known about the other men.
No one is sure where the Freedom Seekers were housed during the day in Avon. The nuns of the former Alleluia House at 255 Avon Mountain Road behind the Avon Old Farms Hotel said that there was a hidey-hole in the cellar of the 1738 house, which they believed had been used to hide slaves during the day. Before its demolition in 1988, a member of the Avon Historical Society toured the house and reported that there were, indeed, holes in the foundation that may have been used by the Underground Railroad. Unfortunately, when a new house was erected in the same place, the foundation was replaced with a new one.

There is a very old hay barn remaining at the back of the property, where passengers might have been hidden under the floor. Many stationmasters cut trapdoors into the floors of their hay barns with a small room underneath, but this barn has one-foot by one-foot beams over a dirt floor, so there is no evidence that this could have been used as a hidey-hole.

Although some have thought that the houses of Phineas Gabriel or Bela Kellogg might have been used as way-stations, taking the fugitives through the center of Avon, although hidden, would not have been the safest thing to do. Hiding the passengers to the east of Waterville Road and the Farmington River makes more sense. It may be that other homes and barns, since taken down along Waterville and Nod Roads, were also used.

Connecticut finally abolished slavery in 1848, but there was no loud celebration because there were no slaves left in the state, and those African Americans remaining had already established themselves with jobs, families, and homes. They may have been “free”, but they still did not have the franchise.

When the Federal Government passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, it only incited the Abolitionist Movement’s fervor. Professor Strother writes: “The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, adopted as a result of the compromise (of 1847), was a drastic act indeed. It deprived the accused fugitive of any right to a trial by jury. Worse still, it provided that he could not even testify in his own behalf. On one hand, the law provided no penalty for falsely claiming a freeman a fugitive from slavery, and on the other, it set a fine of $1000 and a prison sentence of up to six months on anyone who sheltered an alleged Freedom Seekers or who helped him escape. Further, “all good citizens” were commanded to “aid and assist in the prompt and efficient execution” of the law. This measure, in short, stacked the cards in favor the claimant. It made every law-abiding citizen a potential slave-catcher, and it afforded not the slightest protection to the free Negro whom any slave-hunter cared to seize. It was an open invitation to kidnapping.”

Even those who were not abolitionists were outraged. The farmers in Middlefield declared that they could not obey this “pretended law”. The Slave Act, despite its inherent dangers, only increased the traffic on the Underground Railroad. It is estimated that 25,000 to 100,000 escaped bondage using the routes of the Underground Railroad from the Midwest and New England.

When the Civil War began, the traffic on the Underground Railroad slowed because slaves flocked to the Union lines, but it did not stop entirely. Even after Abraham Lincoln gave his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, formally freeing the slaves, and even after the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified in December of 1865, the railroad continued to stay open. It was only in April of 1870, after the 15th Amendment was ratified, giving African Americans the right to vote, that a sign was posted in Michigan that read, “Notice to Stockholders – Office of the Underground Railway: This office is permanently closed.”