Rev. Rufus Hawley (1741-1826) was born in East Granby, graduated from Yale in 1767 and was ordained pastor of the Northiugton (now Avon) Congregational Church on Dec. 20, 1769. He continued as minister until his resignation in 1817. In December of that year, the old Northington meeting house burned down. Believed to have been a case of arson (suspicion even fell on the minister himself), the fire came at the time of an intense dispute within the church concerning where in town a new meeting house should be built. Eventually the congregation split, with the majority deciding to construct what is now the West Avon Congregational Church, located in the center of town, while the rest built the Avon Congregational Church, located in the commercial center of Avon. Rev. Hawley continued as a pastor at the West Avon Church until his death in 1826.
Rufus Hawley kept detailed journals in which he recorded his daily activities between 1763 and 1812. In a recent book about Hawley, Catch’d on Fire: The Journals of Rufus Hawley of Avon, Connecticut, author Nora Oakes Howard makes extensive use of these journals. Hawley built the fourth house he owned in Avon in 1798-1799. Located at 281 Old Farms Road, it was notable for having two side-by-side kitchens in the rear. Known as Avonside, it remained in the family for many years after the minister’s death. It passed to his son, Rufus Forward Hawley, who sold it to his nephew, Edward Eugene Hawley in 1837. After his death in 1868, it passed to Edward’s daughters, Florence Genevieve Hawley, who used it as a summer home, and then to Bertha H. Hawley. It was then inherited by their nephew, Reginald Birney of West Hartford, who died in 1936. Damaged by fire in 1950, the house was sold by Birney’s widow in 1951 to Robert and Gladys August, who also became the guardians of the Hawley family papers, including the journals. They owned the house until 1998. In 2002, the Hawley family archives were donated to the Avon Free Public Library.