Austin Edmonds was born in 1851 in Tillery (Halifax County), North Carolina. Edmonds was a farmer who was charged with larceny on November 4, 1872, and sentenced to two years in the North Carolina State Penitentiary. Edmonds was recorded in the North Carolina State Penitentiary's Descriptive Register for the Years 1869-1884 as prisoner number 585. In his sentencing records, Edmonds' race is noted as "colored" and elsewhere as Black. Austin was twenty years old when he was arrested. Edmonds was noted as possessing no formal education, meaning he could not read or write at that time. He was discharged from the State Penitentiary on October 17, 1874. Edmonds married Penny Spaighes in 1846, and Leah Jones in 1905. He died on January 26, 1930, in Conconara (Halifax County), North Carolina.