Sarah Maria Cornell

DESCRIPTION: Reverend Avery seduces and then murders Sarah. He flees from justice, but is recaptured. Sarah's ghost (?) pleads for justice, warns girls not to be decieved by men, and asks for the listeners' prayers.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1845 (Journal from the Sharon)
KEYWORDS: homicide clergy seduction betrayal trial escape
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
May 3, 1803 - Birth of Sarah Maria Cornell
Dec 20, 1832 - Murder of Cornell, who was pregnant. The body was found hanging from a stackpole in Tiverton, Rhode Island, not far from the mill in Fall River where she worked. The Rev. Ephraim K. Avery was suspected, but he was acquitted at trial
FOUND IN: US(MA)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Huntington-SongsTheWhalemenSang, pp. 156-158, "Sarah Mariah Cornell" (1 text)
Thompson-APioneerSongster 66, "Sarah Maria Cornell" (1 text)
Forget-Me-Not-Songster, pp. 195-196, "Sara Maria Cornell" (1 text)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia1, pp. 63-66, "Sarah Maria Cornell" (1 text plus a photo of a broadside with two pieces about her)
Roud #2044
NOTES [10644 words]: Huntington could find no other versions of this song, which I usually take to indicate that it is not traditional. But I feel sure I've seen it somewhere else. And it wasn't from the version in Cohen, which had not been published at the time. The fact that it is in the Forget-Me-Not-Songster obviously made it widely known.
The story is famous, There is a long Wikipedia page for Sarah Maria Cornell. There were at least four attempts to produce ballads about it -- at least one broadsheet printed two of them! Raven, pp. 110-115, reprints some of the lyrics and has facsimiles of multiple broadsides. The various songs include:
* "Sarah Maria Cornell," probably the most important since it is the one found in the Forget-Me-Not Songster. It opens "Kind Christians I pray you attend To these few lines that I have penned, While I relate the murderous fate That did await poor Cornell's end." This is Roud #2044; it appears to be the only song about this murder to have gone into tradition (if minimally). Kasserman quotes part of it on p. 220.
* "Death of Sarah M. Cornell," beginning "Come all young people far and near, Your country's pride and glory, 'Tis unto you I will relate, A melancholy story." No Roud number; facsimile on p. 113 of Raven.
* "The Clove Hitch Knot," beginning "Ye people all a warning take, Think of the clove-hitch knot, Enough to make your hearts to ache, Don't let it be forgot." To the tune of "Auld Lang Syne." Roud #V55854; facsimile on p. 114 of Raven. The copy reprinted by Raven, which also includes "The Factory Maid," can now be seen in the Brown University Digital Repository; it is battered, but the text is intact. Kasserman, p. 220, quotes part of this and attributes it to the 2 June 1833 issue of the Sangamo Journal. However, the online archive of this paper at the Illinois Digital Newspaper Archives gives the date as June 1. Only three verses are quoted; there are nine verses in the broadside. Catherine Williams's Fall River: An Authentic Narrative, (available on Google Books) p. 149, has five verses, not the same as the ones in the Sangamo Journal but not much different from the broadside.
* "The Factory Maid," beginning "Oh, list the sad tale of the poor Factory Maid, How cheerful she went when the day's work was over." To the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Roud #V37227; facsimile on p. 114 of Raven. The copy reprinted by Raven, which also includes "The Clove Hitch Knot," can now be seen in the Brown University Digital Repository; it is battered, but the text is intact.
* Raven, p. 116, has a facsimile of "Lines written on the Death of Sarah M. Cornell," but that indicates no tune; I'm not sure it was intended to be sung.
* Kasserman, p. 220, quotes an excerpt from p. 150 of Williams, which begins "He preached the gospel night and day, What a wicked man was he; The devil helped him preach and pray; How wicked he must be"; the final verse starts, "Hang him, hang him on a tree, Tie around him Avery's knot." Williams does not footnote this; I have not seen it elsewhere, and there is no mention of a tune.
* Kasserman, p. 221, has another excerpt, from the Rhode Island Republican, July 24, 1833, p. 2 (available from the Library of Congress digital collections). This is an unattributed piece about the judges in Avery's preliminary hearing, Howe and Haile, which begins, "My friend, Johnny Howe -- Thy reasoning, I vow, is the cutest I've ever seen recorded -- The Laurel Wreath won, They'll blaze like the sun, And long hall thy name be applauded." This I suspect was intended to be sung -- it fits well to "Well Met, Pretty Maid (The Sweet Nightingale)" -- but I have not found it anywhere else.
Although "Sarah Maria Cornell" is clearly the best-remembered of the songs about Cornell, none of the sources indicates a tune, and there are no field collections to indicate one. I wonder a bit if this was even originally meant to be a song (as opposed to a poem). If it was, I suspect that it was intended for a hymn tune. This is based on the meter and rhyme scheme. Most traditional songs are in "ballad meter" or "common meter," with alternating lines of four and three (typically iambic) feet, i.e. 4343 or 8686 (depending on whether you count feet or syllabled), rhymed xaxa. This piece, however, is in "long meter," 4444 feet or 8888 syllables, and the rhyme scheme is aabb. This is rare in folk songs but fairly common in hymns -- when I looked at the text, the first tune that came to mind for me was "The Truth Sent From Above," then "All You That Are Unto Mirth Inclined (The Sinner's Redemption)," but the pattern fits other well-known hymns such as "Old Hundred," "Duke Street," "Windham," and Tallis's Canon.
This particular murder was particularly noteworthy because:
(1) the girl was pregnant.
(2) the alleged father and murderer was a Methodist minister (which at the time made him something of a radical, even though Methodists are now about as bland as a denomination can be. In fact, Kasserman, p. 19, thinks that the fact that there were Methodists involved helps explain the political interest in the case; this was the time of the Anti-Masonic movement, and those who didn't like Masonic rituals didn't trust Methodists either).
(3) the girl was a mill worker, and there had already been a great debate about the morality of unmarried women working in mills, so the case took on an extra dimension about the whole system of mill work (Kasserman, pp. 2-3).
(4) the trial was the longest in American history to that time, lasting most of a month (Kasserman, p. 1).
(5) the event was the subject of one of the first "true crime" books ever written, by Catherine Read Arnold Williams (this book was the inspiration for, and part of the basis of, Dawson, who on p. 283 suggested that it was commissioned by a member of the Fall River Committee that pursued Rev. Avery).
Sarah Maria Cornell came, on her mother's side, from a fairly aristocratic family, the Leffingwells (Dawson, p. 44 -- though Dawson seems to make them more significant than they were; few other histories mention them). Sarah's mother, Lucretia Leffingwell, had rejected her parents' wishes for her to marry into another high-status family; she fell in love with an employee in one of her father's businesses, James Cornell. They would have three children, James Jr., Lucretia, and Sarah. (Raven, p. 23, claims there were four children, but can't even name the fourth.) Her parents' fears about James Cornell Sr. proved well-founded; eventually, he started demanding that his father-in-law pay him enough to allow him to give up working (Dawson, pp. 46-47). When Christopher Leffingwell refused to fork any more cash (Dawson, p. 48), Cornell abandoned his wife and children and disappeared for someplace in the west (Dawson, p. 48; Raven, p. 23; Kasserman, p. 30).
Leffingwell also decided that he had depleted his estate enough for the Cornells, and that Lucretia was not trustworthy anyway; when he died in 1810, the inheritance went to his other children and Lucretia Cornell received almost nothing (Dawson, p. 49; Raven, p. 23; according to Kasserman, p. 30, her father left her an endowment of $1500 to be administered by one of her brothers; she was to be given the interest). Lucretia Cornell seems to have had no other means of support, and gave away her children to other family members. Sarah went to stay with her aunt Joanna Leffingwell Lathrop (Kasserman, p. 30. Kasserman suspects that it was old Leffingwell's plan that Lucretia would turn her children over to others to raise).
There are no surviving portraits of Sarah, but was said to be small (Raven, p. 85, says five feet tall and about 100 pounds), with dark hair and eyes but light skin), and to have been attractive (Dawson, p 53); some accounts make her very pretty indeed,
We know little of Sarah's life until she apprenticed to a tailor at age 15. She completed her two year apprenticeship in October 1820 (Kasserman, p. 31).
The next few years of Sarah's life are also hard to trace. She seems to have gotten in trouble several times. She started out as a seamstress. It may be that she wasn't very competent, because she soon shifted employment (Raven, p. 24. I wonder if perhaps she was a little clumsy, because she was once fired from a mill for damaging the machinery; Kasserman, p. 48). But perhaps her moving about was the result of problems with her reputation (Kasserman, p. 32) -- there are reports of shoplifting (from two different merchants, according to Dawson, p. 60). At least once, she took work under the assumed name "Maria Snow" -- and had to leave her home in North Providence when her identity was revealed (Kasserman, p. 34). She lost another job, in Jewitt City, Connecticut, when she was seen with a young man in the evening (Kasserman, p. 35). It wasn't until 1823 that she managed to find a job in Slaterville, Rhode Island that let her stay out of trouble for a few years; in 1825, she was finally able to contact her family again (Kasserman, p. 35).
I strongly suspect her problems were the result of some sort of mental diversity. (Perhaps this explains why, although attractive and skilled, she seems never to have had a very serious suitor.) She seems to have had a hard time foreseeing the consequences of her actions, and she did things that other people thought strange. Dawson, p. 242, refers to "mood swings," but notes that they were during her pregnancy Even if one ignores the reports of shoplifting, bad credit, and being too free with men, some people claimed she was erratic -- at least, that's what they said after her death, when she was subjected to a smear campaign,
Dawson, p. 87, says that "Sarah's writings revealed a fragility and naïveté" (though Dawson cites no examples). Yet most who read her letters think she was fairly intelligent (Raven, p. 27); her problems seem to have been with impulse control and in looking to the future. Dawson, p. 61, thinks that it was the stigma associated with her thefts which caused her to leave the area where she was brought up. She also sought out radical religion, which is how she become involved in the Methodist church (Dawson, pp. 50-51; Raven, pp. 24, 26). She first joined a congregation in Slatersville some time before 1826, when the mill in Slaterville burned down and she ended up moving (Dawson, p. 75). She got in trouble with the Methodists at this time, too, for keeping company with a young man; they read her out of the church (Kasserman, p. 43).
So just how "bad" was Sarah Mariah Cornell? This is vital to what follows. At this distance, there is a lot that is unclear. Early in life, she had clearly stolen property -- and paid for it when confronted. Claims that she had a venereal disease come from biased witnesses. Many of the rumors about her go back to just a few sources in the Methodist Church -- Ephraim Avery all by himself was responsible for a lot of them. How much exaggeration was there? My inclination is to think that Sarah wasn't nearly as immoral as was claimed; she was simply someone who didn't understand "the rules," and found herself ostracized as a result. As an autistic, I can say firmly that that has happened to me. The strong sense I get is that Sarah was a lost soul, guilty of several minor faults, in need of help and support -- and never getting it.
A claim was eventually made that there was another woman named Cornell, one Maria Snow Cornell, who lived in Providence and was truly "bad," and that some of her failings were mistakenly attributed to Sarah Cornell (Kasserman, p. 221). This apparently did not come up at the trial; I have no idea if any of it is true.
It has been suggested that she gave up her work as a tailor and took a much more anonymous job as a factory worker in an attempt to avoid the stigma that was following her. However, Kasserman, p. 32, says she first went to work in a factory in 1822 in Killingly, Connecticut, before her first recorded incident of theft. Kasserman, pp. 32-33, thinks it might have something to do with troubles with men. I think we have to say that we don't know her motivations.
In 1827-1828, while working in Dorchester, she perhaps considered moving to Boston and trying again to work as a tailor, but something, perhaps ill health, stopped her; she was frequently too sick to work a full week's shifts during that winter (Kasserman, p. 45). Suffice it to say that, after Dorchester, she ended up a factory worker in Lowell, Massachusetts. (Which was not yet the harsh place it eventually became; workers were still paid by the piece and could work at their own speed; Kasserman, p. 46).
It was in Lowell that Sarah encountered Ephraim Kingsbury Avery, who was installed at the local Methodist congregation in June 1830 (Raven, p. 31). a month after Sarah moved to Lowell (Raven, p. 28; Raven on p. 30 has an engraving of Avery as he looked at the time of his trial).
Avery was born in December 1798, so he was four and a half years older than Sarah. He had tried several occupations, including studying medicine for a few years as well as doing some carpentry, before becoming a Methodist minister (Raven, p. 29). He married his wife Sofia in 1821; at the time of Sarah's death, he had two sons and two daughters, with a third daughter on the way (Dawson, p. 140).
The fact that he was a Methodist minister is significant. The Congregational Church still dominated New England at this time, and it required its ministers to be properly trained. But the Methodists, being evangelical upstarts, didn't care about that. Their system of clerical oversight made sure that their ministers were orthodox in theology -- but they didn't care much about pastoral or biblical knowledge. What mattered was passion (Kasserman, pp. 76-77). But, of course, a passionate man like Avery could be passionate in ways other than preaching.... There is some evidence of a violent temper on Avery's part -- violent enough that he actually lost a defamation suit against another minister caused by his outbursts and ended up paying the very large sum of $190 (Raven, pp. 74-75; Kasserman, p. 83, though Dawson, p. 141, wonders if some of these tales might not have been made up after the fact to make him look bad). There was at least one other case where a parishioner considered a lawsuit against him for accusations of bad character (Kasserman, p. 83). There was also a story about him making a move on a parishioner (Kasserman, p. 81), though no proof was ever given. He progressed fairly rapidly through the Methodist hierarchy; by 1827 he was minister, deacon, and elder, entitled to officiate every ritual of the church (Kasserman, p. 81).
According to Raven, p. 40, Sarah at one time came to Avery's home looking for work as a domestic servant; Kasserman, p. 49, thinks this might have been one of her attempts to escape her bad reputation. Dawson, pp. 158-159, thinks she liked his preaching -- and suggests on p. 160 that he needed help at home because he already had two children and was rarely at home to help his wife. It's not clear if Cornell ever was employed by Avery (he claimed she didn't; others claimed she worked there for a week), but it's certain that Avery's wife soon demanded that she not work for him. Raven, pp. 42-43, offers Avery's account of his relations with Sarah: When pressured about her past, she admitted to fornication with at least two men. All this resulted in a lot of correspondence between Avery, Cornell, various doctors, and other Methodist ministers. But Avery's version was sufficient to have her expelled from the Methodist church (Kasserman, p. 55). This was in 1830; she then went to Dover, New Hampshire.
Some time after her appeal to Avery, another minister found her a job as a domestic, but she was fired after a few weeks on suspicion of theft (Kasserman, p. 52).
I have to say, had I been Sarah, I would have never gone near another Methodist in my life. But apparently she was a true believer. However, she was finding it hard to locate a congregation that didn't hold her history against her. This caused her to make what proved a terrible mistake: To get back into the Methodists' good graces, she decided to confess her sins in hopes they would absolve her. So she wrote to Avery (Kasserman, p. 155). In these letters, she confessed to various faults; we don't know the details, but they included sexual misconduct. And Avery kept the letters, and would hold them over her.
I haven't traced every place she visited; there isn't much point. I'm not sure the records are complete anyway. According to Kasserman, p. 60, she lived in four towns in 1831 alone: "The year had hardly been a success for Sarah." But, in 1832, her sister and brother-in-law decided to let her come to their home in Woodstock and work there as a seamstress (Kasserman, pp. 60-61). This was perhaps the most successful period of her career. But then,.. something went wrong. It started when, in August, she insisted on attending another Methodist camp meeting, at Thompson -- where she was seen by many of the people who had previously driven her out of their churches (Kasserman, pp. 62-63).
We know that she was pregnant when she died. There is every reason to think that she became pregnant at Thompson, and that Ephraim Avery was the father. Sarah apparently told Avery about her pregnancy in October, but he wanted to wait to be certain. Sarah then consulted Dr. Thomas Wilbur (Kasserman, p. 68) and eventually told the doctor that Avery was the father of her child.
Sarah moved to Fall River because the Rawsons' lawyer said that, if she lived in the same state as Avery, she could demand child support from him (Kasserman, p. 65; Dawson, pp. 252-253). She moved there on October 1, 1832, took lodgings, and, by no later than November 1, found work in another mill (Kasserman, p. 65). And tried yet again to join a Methodist congregation. But she also prepared, though she did not send, a letter quitting the Fall River church; Kasserman, p. 70, thinks it was to avoid being drummed out when they found out she was an unwed mother. (Kasserman, p . 116, has a facsimile of her letter.)
It was near Fall River, in neighboring Tiverton, Rhode Island, that Sarah Cornell died.
Cornell's body was discovered by John Durfee of Tiverton on the morning of December 21, 1832. He went out with his team to work, and spied a body hanging by a rope from a pole that supported the cover of his winter hay store (Kasserman, p. 5). It was Cornell, her hair disheveled, her clothing mostly intact, but her shoes set aside by the pole. One of them was muddy (Kasserman, pp. 5-6). Durfee called out, and his father and a couple of other men came out. They cut down the body, and one of them summoned Elihu Hicks, the local coroner.
The Durfees did not know who she was, but Ira Bidwell, the local Methodist minister, was able to identify her as Cornell (Kasserman, p. 7), though he didn't know her well; she had only been part of his congregation for a few weeks and was only a probationary member (Raven, pp. 16-17).
Also identifying her was Dr. Thomas Wilbur, the man she had consulted about her pregnancy. He examined the body and said that the evidence seemed to indicate that she was pregnant (autopsies would prove this without doubt).
Coroner Elihu Hicks arrived about this time and immediately picked six men to conduct an inquest; Richard Durfee, the father of John, was chosen foreman (Raven, p. 14). Dr. WIlbur he dropped a bombshell: Sarah had consulted him about a pregnancy, and said that the father was the married Methodist minister, Ephraim Avery (Kasserman, p. 7). The jury heard a little additional testimony, then reached a conclusion of suicide (Kasserman, p. 8. Dawson, p. 114, quotes the verdict: "Sarah M. Cornell committed suicide by hanging herself upon a stake in said stockyard and was influenced to commit the crime by the wicked conduct of a married man, which we gather from Dr. Wilbur together with the contents of three letters found in the trunk of the said Sarah M. Cornell"). Even Dr. Wilbur apparently initially supported this opinion; he thought that a married man (presumably Avery, though he did not name a name) "had sexually assaulted Sarah, humiliated her, and then left her destitute -- and that, ashamed, Sarah had died by suicide" (Dawson, p. 110, The quoted words are Dawson's, not Wilbur's).
It was a cold night (Dawson, p. 25) -- cold enough that the body apparently froze -- but no one seems to have tried to use that to establish the time of death. Two people around Tiverton reported hearing screams that night, but since they reported hearing it at very different times (Dawson, p. 229; one of the times fit, the other did not), that was no help.
A search was conducted of the area. They found a comb of Sarah's, broken and with the two halves separated, at some distance from her body. It was a comb that was apparently important to her; she had had it repaired at least once, and she was reported to have worn it to the mill on the day before she went out to her death (Raven, p. 49).
One thing instantly strikes me about the description of the body. Cornell's feet brushed the ground, and her head was near a wall -- and her knees were bent (Kasserman, p. 5). In other words, it would have been difficult if not impossible for to have hung herself in that position. It sounds to me as if she had to be already unconscious or worse when placed where she was found.
Furthermore, William Durfee, who had been to sea and knew his knots, observed that the rope was tied with a "clove hitch knot" -- a two-handed knot that probably would not tighten if used to suspend a body. In other words, you couldn't use it to hang yourself (Kasserman, p. 11; Raven, p. 16. The use of this knot was one of the key points in the murder charge, although Dawson, pp. 176-177, says that moderns consider it possible to hang one's self with a clove hitch knot. But even if a skilled knot-tier could have tied a clove hitch knot well enough to hang herself, would Sarah have had that knowledge? Much more likely that a man who had worked in trades such as carpentry or medicine would know it.). When the trial came, a man named Benjamin Manchester would also testify that a clove hitch knot was used (Kasserman, p. 143).
Eventually a good deal would be learned about the circumstances. Dr. WIlbur had ore to report: Avery had advised Sarah to take a large dose of tansy -- a plant which was used to promote abortions, but he suggested a dose of thirty drops, large enough that it likely would prove fatal (Raven, p. 21; Kasserman, p. 69; Dawson, p. 174, reminds us that Avery had studied medicine for a while, though he did not complete his studies, so he likely would have known that that was a severe overdose). Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare), according to Stevens/Klarner, p. 71, is nasty stuff; they put it in their second-highest category of toxicity. They report that it is native to Europe but now widely found in the eastern U.S., in peat bogs and the like. Its active ingredient is the oil, tanacetin. This can cause "convulsions, foaming at the mouth, violent spasms, dilated pupils, quick and feeble pulse, kidney problems, and death. Dermatitis is also caused by touching the plant." It was "used to kill intestinal worms, induce abortion, and encourage menstruation. Humans are often poisoned by taking overdoses of oil or tea made from the leaves. This herb has a very bitter taste and was commonly used in the Middle Ages for witchcraft." According to Dawson, pp. 104-105, it is the same as the deadly ingredient in wormwood/absinthe; it is found in high concentration in tansy.
Oil of tansy would be found in Sarah's effects, but the tansy incident reveals something interesting: however odd Sarah may have been, she was not suicidal. Dr. Wilbur testified that when she talked to him about her pregnancy, "She said, 'will it be safe for me to take the Oil of Tansy to procure abortion?' I told her, by no means -- it could endanger her life, or if she lived through it, would destroy her health. She replied, 'then I will not take it, for I'd rather have my child and do the best I can, than to endanger my life" (Dawson, p. 133). This is supported by other evidence: she never showed the slightest interest in self-harm. Her sister Lucretia said she was never suicidal (Dawson, p. 246). This was also clear from a letter to her family in November 1832 about her post-pregnancy plans (Raven, p. 72). And on the day of her death, she asked a housemate to buy cloth so that they could wear matching outfits the next week; she made other plans for coming days as well (Kasserman, p. 72).
Sarah had also made a partial confession to that housemate, Lucy Hathaway, the daughter of the landlady. Sarah had said "what can an innocent girl do, in the hands of a strong man, and he using all kinds of argument?" (Kasserman, pp. 104-105). According to Lucy, "She said I will never go there [to a camp meeting] again, and then spoke of her health, that she had seen something which occurred there so disgusting, things which took place between a church member and a minister, and a married man, too" (Dawson, p. 240). Sarah did not say that she was the church member and Avery the minister, but the implication is strong.
Harriet Hathaway, the woman with whom Cornell boarded, said that she had expected to be home by nine on the night before her murder, but she never came back (Raven, p. 17). A key found in her pocket opened a case that was in her room (Raven, pp. 17-18). In the boxes, in addition to clothing and such, were several letters. Several of them were addressed to Sarah, and discussed plans to meet someone (Raven, pp. 18-19). A last one was a letter written by Sarah to the Reverend Bidwell and his Methodist congregation, asking to withdraw from membership, (Bidwell used this as an excuse to wash his hands of her and refuse her burial; John Durfee and his family eventually arranged her funeral and buried her in their plot -- Kasserman, pp. 8-9.) She was buried on Saturday, December 22 (Kasserman, p, 9).
When local women examined her body as they prepared it for burial, they found grass stains and scratches on her knees, and bruises on her abdomen (Raven, p. 16; Dawson, p. 91); these bruises gave those who saw them the strong impression of an attempt to kill her child, or of some sort of struggle; also sexual abuse. Some of the marks appeared to be the result of blows from a large hand (Dawson, p. 99). Dr. Wilbur was sure Sarah was horizontal when the injuries were sustained (Dawson, p. 216; this was supported by the women who cleaned her body, based on the way the way her body waste was spread on her clothes; Kasserman, pp.143-144). It is reasonable to assume this struggle took place where her comb was lost and damaged, though no blood was found there (Dawson, p. 216).
This made a slip of paper, found in a bandbox at the home where she had been staying, seem particularly sinister. It read, "If I should be missing enquire of the Rev Mr Avery of Bristol he will know where I am Dec 20th S M Cornell" (Kasserman, p. 9; Dawson, pp. 111-112. This slip has not been preserved, but Raven, p. 35, reproduces a facsimile made at the time).
The additional information caused coroner Hicks to retract his verdict (on the nitpicking ground that two of the jurors did not meet Rhode Island's property requirements and so were not legally entitled to sit on a jury; Kasserman, p 11) and call for a real autopsy, even though it meant exhuming the body. It was only a partial autopsy; when Dr. Wilbur and Dr. Foster Hooper were called upon to examine the body, the coroner's jury stopped them at one stage because it meant fully exposing the woman's corpse (Kasserman, p. 12; Dawson, p 129). But several things were determined: First, she was indeed four or so months pregnant with a girl baby (Dawson, p 128). Second, in addition to the abdominal injuries, there appeared to have been a blow, or a prolonged pressure, on her cheek (Dawson, p. 98), an injury to her left hip, and more (Dawson, pp. 128-129). Her neck was not broken -- meaning that, if the hanging had killed her, it was by strangulation (Dawson, pp, 98-99; Raven, p. 37). This, to be sure, was what usually happened in a self-inflicted hanging when there is only a short drop. But the cumulative effect was plain: Dr. Hooper concluded "that violence was exercised upon Sarah M. Cornell before her death" (Dawson, p. 129)
There was more legal sloppiness to come. Before the second coroner's jury even officially made their finding of murder, John Durfee and another man went to Fall River to swear out a warrant for the Rev. Avery. Only... they didn't even remember his name. The warrant in Fall River listed a "Daniel Everth/Everill," not "Avery." If, when they found Avery, he hadn't waived his rights, they would probably have had to start the whole process over (Kasserman, pp. 12-13). Ultimately, though, the coroner's jury concluded that Sarah was murdered and suggested that Avery had probably done it (Raven, p. 37): "Sarah M. Cornell came to her death by having a cord or a hemp line drawn around her neck and strangled until she was dead... and they also believe, and from strong circumstantial evidence, that Ephraim. K. Avery, of Bristol, in the Country of Bristol, and the State of &c., was principal or accessory in her death" (quoted on p. 135 of Dawson).
The Reverend Bidwell, who had been the first to identify Sarah, was meanwhile telling his fellow Methodist minister Avery about all that was going on (Kasserman, p, 13), so Avery perhaps had access to privileged information. He certainly got busy seeking an alibi -- he could not name anyone he had seen on the night of the murder, so he started seeking people who might have seen him (Kasserman, p. 13; Raven, p. 73. No one came forward. Eventually he claimed he had simply been on a walk in Fall River; Dawson, p. 207. He described a few people he wanted to visit, none of whom were present, and two people who should have seen him, neither of whom could be found; Kasserman, pp. 96-97). By his own account he had been caught away from home -- and not far from the Durfee farm -- when the ferry that was supposed to take him home refused to run so late at night.
Avery's account of his actions on that night were surprisingly detailed -- more so than most people's recollections of what they do in the course of an ordinary day (I noticed this myself before reading Dawson's comments to this effect on pp. 230-233; it read like a rehearsed story). Avery also hired a lawyer, who quickly took on two others (Kasserman, p. 15). That's a lot of legal firepower for someone who supposedly hadn't done anything!
After one night in jail, he was released on a sort of parole, allowing him to spend his time at home (Raven, p. 36).
In Fall River, committees were formed to investigate and prosecute the case; they were funded by a public subscription (Kasserman, p. 27; the preceding pages describe the committees and their members). Tiverton also wanted to pursue the case, but Bristol, Rhode Island, was where Avery had been taken into custody; they managed to keep hold of the case (Raven, p. 45).
Avery would in effect go on trial twice. The first proceeding was a preliminary hearing to decide whether to go to a full trial; it resulted in Avery's release. That produced such an outcry that he was pulled in for a full trial. That resulted in his acquittal. I'm not going to be particularly careful about which evidence went with which trial, because most of the basic evidence was the same. The main trial merely examined the evidence in more detail, plus engaged in a lot of mud-slinging to besmirch Cornel's reputation.
The first step was the preliminary hearing before two justices of the peace (Raven, p. 63). This included a written statement by Avery. As Raven, p. 42, comments, most of what Avery said about the case in the written statement was true, "but he also left out certain significant details." (Avery was not called to testify -- indeed, according to Rhode Island law, the accused was not permitted to testify; Raven, p. 60. Avery's written statement would eventually be included in the book he published about the case, the Vindication; Kasserman, p. 241) The hearing was scrupulously fair to Avery -- e.g. the judge refused to hear Dr. Wilbur's evidence that Sarah had said that Avery had gotten her pregnant, or her sister and brother-in-laws' testimony about her pregnancy (Kasserman, p. 107). After an intense two week hearing, the two justices on January 7, 1833 released their finding: There was no probable cause to think that Avery had murdered Cormell; they considered her death a suicide (Raven, pp. 63-64).
This conclusion seems to me wrong (the preliminary hearing was not to determine whether Avery was guilty; it was to determine if there was enough evidence to proceed to a real trial, and there surely was enough evidence for that!). The main "justification" claimed by Justice John Howe was that women were evil and a clergyman would never commit a crime (Kasserman, pp. 114-115). That was an obvious crime against logic and facts and ignored a great deal of evidence. (The other judge, after Howe's besmirching of his profession, didn't have much to say; Kasserman, p. 117.) Still, that should have been the end of the matter. But public outrage was so high that, on January 11, another arrest warrant was sworn out for Avery (Raven, pp. 64-65).
There was just one problem: He had disappeared (Raven, p. 65), leaving his family behind. Also, in what may well have been a deliberate move to protect Avery, his lawyer Nathaniel Bullock had withdrawn from the case, meaning that Bullock did not have to know where Avery was (Kasserman, p. 120), which made things a lot harder for the arresting officers. Avery was eventually found at the home of some friends in a place called Rindge, New Hampshire, on January 21. Fortunately for the pursuers led by Harvey Herndon (who had been a leader of the investigations in Fall River), they had filed the proper extradition paperwork in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts (Kasserman, p. 121, thinks Avery went to New Hampshire because it meant the pursuers would need to involve more courts and slow the pursuers down). Because Herndon had done his legal work properly, once they found Avery, they were able to take him back (Raven, pp. 65-69; Kaerman, pp. 120-126. This was an amazing bit of work by Herndon that arguably deserves its own book).
Avery wasn't actually charged at that point. The grand jury didn't indict him for murder until March 8, 1832. The trial was scheduled for May 6. And, this time, Avery, who had shown himself a flight risk, was kept in jail (Raven, p. 78) -- though enough Methodists and others supported him that his jail cell soon was made comfortable (Kasserman, p. 128).
As the second trial approached, they dug up Sarah's body again, and conducted yet another autopsy; this doesn't seem to have proved much except that her body was not miraculously preserved (Raven, p. 70) -- though Dr. Hooper was "almost" certain that the evidence indicated either an attempt at an abortion or rape (Kasserman, p. 131).
Sarah's brother-in-law, Grindall Rawson (with whom she had been so friendly that they were suspected of having once courted -- indeed, the court case involved charges that he had slept with her; Kasserman, p. 251) had a relevant letter from her, the text of which is given by Raven. The probable cause hearing had not admitted it, so Rawson gave them to the papers. It is dated November 18 (by which time Sarah would certainly have known she was pregnant) and says that she met Avery, and he pointed out that he had a wife and children and "I cannot marry you" (Raven, p. 71). Sarah goes on to discuss how she will try to live and support the baby (Raven, p. 72). This letter was suppressed by the court (Raven, p. 72).
Both sides had new lawyers for the big trial. What should have been a simple murder trial had turned into a factional conflict, with the Methodists trying to defend their radical religion, while the entrenched Congregationalists wanted to drive out the Methodists and the mill owners wanted society to believe their mills were morally good (Dawson, pp. 194-195). Thus the legal teams were large and powerful. The defense in particular went for the very best; the leader of the team was a former United States senator named Jeremiah Mason (Kasserman, p. 129), who is significant enough to have an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography (though the DAB entry never mentions this case). He didn't come cheap -- after the case went long, he he billed the Methodists $2000, and they eventually paid him $1500. In 1833 dollars, remember -- that's the equivalent of at least $50,000, and probably more, in 2025 dollars. Several other lawyers billed almost as much.
The prosecution team included Rhode Island attorney general Albert Greene and a congressman, Dutee Pearce (Dawson, p. 206. Unfortunately, Greene was sick for much of the trial, according to Dawson, p. 259, and perhaps was less effective than he might have been as a result).
Avery's defenders in the Methodist church had raised some $6000 on his behalf (it took three years to pay everything off, according to Kasserman, pp. 248-249), and had found many witnesses (Raven, p. 89; Kasserman, p. 130), and had even, in a couple of cases, engaged in something Raven thinks qualifies as witness tampering (or, at least, witness hiding; Raven, pp. 89-90). Kasserman, pp. 130-131, reports that many potential prosecution witnesses chose to deny everything -- e.g. when they went to investigate reports that Avery had earlier been accused of seducing a woman, no one would tell the the investigators anything. At least one witness actually told the court about the defense telling him not to talk about certain facts -- i.e. suppression of evidence. But the defense was not sanctioned (Kasserman, p. 194).
The case was tried by Chief Justice Samuel Eddy and two other judges. They needed a jury pool of about 120 people to empanel a jury of twelve (Raven, p. 81; Kasserman, pp. 136-137) -- and, even so, there were later questions about the competence of some of them (Kasserman, p. 169). The jury was partially sequestered; they could see their families, but only in the presence of officers who would prevent them from talking about the case to anyone but each other (Dawson, p. 241; Kasserman, p. 168). Ironically, all the time spent screening jurors meant that neither side was entirely ready when the trial started, so there were some delays while the lawyers got things sorted out (Kasserman, p. 137). It is probably significant that the jurors were not allowed to take notes (Kasserman, p. 138) -- a significant advantage for the defense, because they could waste time with irrelevant witnesses until the jurors had mostly forgotten the prosecution's case.
Avery's trial began with John Durfee's account of the discovery of Sarah's body as well as the discovery of various relevant writings in her effects (Dawson, pp. 210-211). John's brother William testified about the rope used for the hanging and the presence of two different knots, one of them the clove-hitch knot that he contended Sarah could not have used to hang herself (Dawson, pp. 211-212). Seth Darling gave indirect evidence that Sarah had sent at least one letter to Avery (Dawson, pp. 212-213). The Bristol postmaster, from his records, could say that two letters had been delivered to Avery from Fall River, on November 12 and 19, though he could not say who had written them (Kasserman, p. 142).
There was dispute about even the most basic facts. There was difference of opinion about the nature of Sarah's injuries. Dr. Wilbur thought someone had tried to abort her fetus. Another witness one of the women who had examined her body, insisted she had been "abused," without being willing to be more specific (Raven, pp. 83-84).
Grindall Rawson and Sarah's sister Lucretia Rawson provided some of the strongest testimony. Lucretia said that Sarah had had her ordinary period a few days before the camp meeting during her stay with the Rawsons. Grindall recalled that she chanced to meet Avery at the Thompson Camp Meeting -- and he said that he would only burn some of her correspondence if she had sex with him (Raven, pp. 83-85; Dawson, p. 253). The letters were admissions of various wrongdoings that she wrote because the Methodist Church required confessions to get back into their good graces. Sarah had written to Avery; apparently he was holding the letters over her. In other words, he blackmailed her into sex. "She may not have been forced, but she was certainly coerced" (Raven, p. 87). Dawson, p. 169, is even more explicit: "Ephraim Avery had raped Sarah Cornell."
It was after that, according to the Rawsons, that she missed her first period. Thus there was strong evidence not only that Avery had coerced her into intercourse but that was the father of her baby. (Interesting that Avery's defense team would claim she had a sexually transmitted disease -- which he would probably have known about -- but he still wanted to have sex with her....)
A key part of the testimony of the Rawsons was affirmed by Ruth Lawton, an employee of the Rawsons, who shared a bed with Sarah and knew the time of her last period (Kasserman, pp. 65, 151). It seems undeniable that she had gotten pregnant at the Thompson camp meeting.
There had been three letters to Sarah found in her effects which seemed pertinent to her fatal assignation. None of them was signed by Avery -- or by anyone else identifiable. However, they could to some extent be traced. The so-called "pink letter" (a copy of the facsimile of which is on p. 106 of Kasserman) suggests that Sarah meet the letter's author on December 18 if the weather was good on that day, or on December 20 if it wasn't. It was sent in November. John Orswell of the steamboat King Philip testified that someone had pressured him, and paid him, to take a letter from Providence to the place where Sarah was staying. Orswell testified that the man was Avery, although he admitted to slight hesitation because he did not know Avery personally (Dawson, p. 223; also Kasserman, pp. 26, 103). But the letter was unsigned and there was dispute over whether it was in Avery's handwriting, so this was not admitted as evidence (Kasserman, p. 108).
The paper for a second note could unequivocally be traced to the store of one Iram Smith -- it was a half-sheet of paper that had been torn, and the other half was found in Smith's store; the tears matched. Avery had visited Smith's store on December 8, although no one saw him tear the sheet or write the letter (Kasserman, pp. 107-108; Dawson, pp. 224-225).
Having made a strong case that Sarah was murdered, and a strong case that Sarah was pregnant by Avery, and a strong case that he had written to her, the question then became, could the prosecution show he was on the spot to murder her?
There is no question but that Avery had been nearby. William Pearce, who ran the ferry between Bristol (where Avery lived) and Portsmouth (on the way from Bristol to Tiverton) reported that Avery had taken the ferry around 2:00 on December 20 -- and was so eager to cross that he paid a double fare rather than wait for another passenger (Kasserman, pp. 145-146). The other ferryman, Jeremiah Gilford, attested to this crossing -- and said that Avery showed up again at 9:30 that night, wanting transportation the other way, though the ferryman refused because of the late hour (Kasserman, p. 146; Raven, pp.33, 58-59. Kasserman, p. 150, reports a witness who was told by Avery that the ferry refused to take him due to bad weather rather than the hour, implying that Avery was lying).
Another witness testified that her family had invited Avery to tea on December 20, and that he had changed the date without an explanation (Kasserman, p. 150) -- which raises the obvious question of why he would have changed the date if all that was on his itinerary for the day was a walk! And why pay extra for the crossing?
There was no certain evidence about Avery's actions between the times he was at the ferry. No one had seen Avery with Cornell on the night of the murder. On the other hand, no one who could identify him had seen him anywhere else, either. Avery had told his own story about how he had spent his time, and it included two people who had met him who could not be produced; also, it meant that he had walked a certain road at a certain time, and a man who had also walked that road said he had never seen Avery (Kasserman, pp. 148, 154). Thus there was evidence that Avery had either lied about or mis-represented his itinerary.
Furthermore, there was quite a bit of evidence about an unidentified man who had visited the Durfee farm the evening of Sarah's death (e.g. Kasserman, p. 151); it's just that no one could prove he was Avery. There was also evidence that the rope used to hang Sarah had been taken from a bag used by the laborers who saw the man on the Durfee farm (Dawson, p. 123; on p. 235 Dawson notes that it could not be proved that the rope came from the bags in the area, but there was a missing rope locally. Benjamin Manchester, who had been one of the laborers using the bags and was one of those who was present when Sarah's body was cut down, testified that a missing rope was probably the murder weapon; Kasserman, p. 143). The one important point is that, if one of them used a local rope, then the murder/suicide was not premeditated. Which raises the obvious question: Whether suicide or murder, would not the person who planned the event have made sure to have a usable rope?
There would also be a witness who said that Avery called on Sarah a lot (Kasserman, p. 192).
The prosecution followed this up with the testimony by Harriet and Lucy Hathaway that Sarah was not suicidal (Kasserman, p. 149). Landlady Harriet Hathaway, Lucy's mother, recounted that Sarah had told her that she was going to the John Durfee house. According to Harriet Hathaway, Sarah had not had men as visitors during her brief time living there; she worked, or stayed home sick, and was never impolite (Dawson, pp 237-238). She had also been polite and had avoided men in the lodging where she lived before moving to the Hathaway house (Dawson, p. 242).
After six days, and about 65 witnesses (Raven, p. 122), the prosecution rested. They had supplied strong evidence that Avery was the father of Sarah's child (Raven, p 87), and that they had had additional meetings, and that Avery had been away from home and no alibi for the night of the murder, but they had not been able to directly connect him to the murder scene.
The court did not admit Dr. Wilbur's "hearsay" statements about what Sarah had said about Avery (Kasserman, p. 69), but Wilbur was a Quaker; I would trust his word a lot more than those Methodist hypocrites. In the course of talking to Dr. Wilbur, she asked him about the use of oil of tansy as recommended by Avery. Sarah had oil of tansy among her possessions when she died. According to the evidence gathered by Catherine Williams from those who found it, "we have ascertained she did not procure it herself at Fall River, nor carry it there with her" (Dawson, p. 174). The implication is that Avery had given her. Dawson's conclusion on p. 174: "Avery had tried to kill her." It certainly looks that way.
The prosecution took six days. The defense used two weeks (Raven, p 93) and called about 145 witnesses (Raven, p. 122) -- most of them, of course, irrelevant to the case, but they no doubt did a good job of wearing the jury down. Just reading the summary in Kasserman (pp. 161-185) is incredibly tedious and sad, even though he rarely gives more than a sentence or two to each of the dozens of witnesses. Those witnesses, as the defense admitted, were almost all Methodists (Kasserman, p. 160) -- a significant point, given the political stakes. They also brought in a bunch of medical experts to dispute the testimony of the doctors who did the autopsy -- particularly Dr, Hooper, who was young (Kasserman, pp. 160-162). The defense's first claim was that Sarah was more than four and a half months pregnant, because -- get this -- the children of "bad" women were smaller than those of good (Raven, pp. 93-94). This was part of an endless series of irrelevant attacks -- no matter her character, either she was murdered or she wasn't. "The case serves as an early example of the art of character assassination in court" (Raven, p. 96). Despite the evidence that she rejected suicide, several mill workers were found who claimed she had shown signs of suicidality (Raven, pp. 96-97).
The defense was portraying Sarah as a slut and a criminal with a "bad" character (Raven, p. 62), This, of course, is totally irrelevant. But it worked.
They brought forth testimony that she was "loose" (Raven, p. 98), and that she had a prejudice against the Methodist Church (Raven, p. 99) -- a simply absurd contention, given they way she kept coming back to it like a whipped dog crawling back to its master.
I'm willing to allow that she probably was free with men. Does this mean she was sexually active? Her brother-in-law Grindall Rawson said no (Dawson, p. 252). For all the slurs the cast on her character at the trial of Ephraim Avery, it appears no witness came forward to say he had slept with her. All testimony about her infidelity was either fourth-hand Methodist gossip or from hostile witnesses. It is noteworthy that, although she supposedly slept around, it was not until the last months of her life that she got pregnant, and that after what seems to have been a single sexual encounter. So... I think we have to file this under "not enough evidence."
Dr. William Graves, who had treated her for what he claimed was "lues venerea" (Dawson, p. 264), suggested that her behavior was strange. Dawson, p. 265, says he "insinuated that she was insane, yet he couldn't be specific." Raven, p. 96, interprets Graves as saying she was "partially insane." Dawson, p, 157, notes however that Graves was a very dubious witness who later killed a patient in an abortion. "Lues venerea" is usually said to be syphilis, and is so explained by Dawson, but the other books seem to think that, in this case, it was gonorrhea. It is noteworthy that none of the men Graves claims Sarah slept with was brought in to testify; as Dawson says on p. 265, "Either Dr. Graves fabricated them, or the men weren't credible as witnesses."
Furthermore, Graves admitted that "I was the family physician of Mr. Avery." In other words, he had a personal relationship with the defendant (Dawson, p. 266). Obviously this raises further doubts about his testimony.
The defense found another doctor, Noah Martin, who also claimed to have treated Sarah for venereal disease in 1831 (Kasserman, p. 56), only he said it was gonorrhea -- and he, too, said Sarah was "seemingly demented" (Dawson, p. 266)
According to Kasserman, p. 54, Sarah gave a different account of her meeting with Dr. Graves, in which her affliction had begun as a cold -- and that Graves started to hit on her. To be fair, it appears that she didn't pay him; Kasserman, p. 58. But did she not pay him before or after he hit on her? Graves and Martin weren't the only one to express doubts about her sanity, though. A coworker at the first trial for her murder declared that she was "deranged" (Raven, p. 61).
One hypothesis that the defense insinuated was that Sarah, when she decided to kill herself, decided to implicate Avery (Raven, p. 90). The obvious problem with this, even if you ignore the fact that she told her family that Avery was to blame and gave them cause to believe it, is the evidence of abdominal trauma on her corpse. Even if you think that (1) Sarah was suicidal (which she wasn't) and (2) vengeful (and neither Dr. Wilbur nor her family saw any sign of that), it doesn't hold up. Her only statement about Avery was that he would know where she was if she disappeared. Had she wanted to get back at him, she would surely have at least have told more people that he got her pregnant.
After all that mud-slinging came the rebuttal phase, which went faster but was even more testy, with the defense trying to bring in more insinuations and the prosecution more facts to bolster its case and objections flying fast and hard. Sometimes they ended up in shouting matches -- indeed, it sounds as if they came close to physical violence. Given the way the defense behaved, I don't blame the prosecution at all.
After days of that, the two sides finally reached the end -- and then went into closing arguments, also of great length. According to Raven, p. 105, the published edition (Benjamin F. Hallett, The Arguments of Counsel in the Close of the Trial of Rev. E. K. Avery, for the Murder of Sarah M. Cornell, 1833) runs ninety pages of small print. It took more than thirteen hours, with the defense slandering Sarah for almost eight of them and then the prosecution offering almost six hours summation. The case went to the jury on the evening of June 1, 1833 (Raven, p. 107).
They finished deliberating shortly before noon the next day, Sunday, June 2. (A bit of a surprise; no one expected them to finish so quickly, and it took time to get everyone into the court; Kasserman, p. 210). Avery was found not guilty, and immediately released (Kasserman, p. 211).
Avery was free to continue his career, of course -- a Methodist panel on June 11 restored him to all his offices, though their report was "hardly a model of impartiality (Kasserman, p. 215). He actually went back to his old congregation in Bristol -- one of the few places where some people still wanted him (Kasserman, p. 216), though the Methodist Conference couldn't give him much money because they'd already blown their budget to pay his fancy lawyers (Kasserman, p. 217). But he was infamous, and mobs frequently followed him although he seems never actually to have been physically assaulted. (He was repeatedly burned in effigy, according to Dawson, p. 276.) His congregation was so fractured over him that it eventually divided (Kasserman, pp. 219, 248). The Methodists soon reassigned him to a congregation in Richmond, Massachusetts. After a relatively brief time there, he gave up his office and took up work as a carpenter (in 1837, according to Kasserman, p. 245), then moved west and became a farmer (Raven, p. 118; according to Kasserman, p. 245, this was some time after 1850). He died in Pittsfield, Ohio, non October 23, 1869 (Raven, p. 120; Dawson, p. 276 ways that "His role [in the Methodist church] gradually diminished and by 1837 he was dropped and then shunned").
There isn't much we can add today to the available evidence, but Dawson did what she could, showing a sampling of Avery's and Cornell's letters to an experienced handwriting analyst. This expert concluded that Avery wrote the letter that lured Cornell to her death (Dawson, p. 279). This verifies the testimony of a handwriting expert who was called upon at the trial who testified to the same effect (Kasserman, pp. 194, 196), though there was of course argument in the court about whether that testimony was valid.
Sarah's grave attracted so many visitors that John Durfee moved it. In 1909, it was moved again, to a place called Oak Grove Cemetery. The worn-down gravestone does not mention her cause of death (Raven, p. 120), but at least it is inconspicuous enough that vandals who have attacked the cemetery have left it alone (Kasserman, p. 254). Would that her life had been as peaceful!
The heart of Avery's defense was that no one saw him with Sarah on the night of the murder. This is true. But we know that he was near Fall River, and not near his home at Bristol, that night, because he wasn't able to get home. Why walk there, so far from home? And if he visited someone, why couldn't he produce an alibi? And if he hadn't been meeting with Sarah, *how would she have known to leave a warning that he would know where she was*? And if he wasn't the father of her child, why did she pursue him? As she herself pointed out to Dr. Wilbur, Methodist clergy didn't have any money (Dawson, p. 173). Why go after Avery? The only thing that makes sense is that (1) he was the father, and (2) he met with her that night.
And Sarah wasn't suicidal, and she probably couldn't have tied the knot used to hang her, and she couldn't very well have sexually assaulted herself on the night she died! Furthermore, there is no evidence Sarah had ever been to the Durfee farm before. How would she even have known she would be able to hang herself on the spot? Yes, she could have wandered there and discovered that there was a set-up that was (just barely) tall enough to hang tiny little Sarah, but suicides are seldom spontaneous, yet she didn't come prepared and had to use a local rope. So someone killed her.
If Avery was there, and he didn't murder her, who did?
I think the only reasonable conclusion is that Avery is the guilty party. Either he tried himself to abort the fetus, and killed her, and then hung her to conceal it (which would explain why he had to find a rope on the site and use that); or he assaulted and murdered her.
Of course, there is certainty, and there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In reading over many nineteenth century trials (Tom Dula, etc.), I find that almost never does the level of proof rise to the level of certainty. It's obviously conceivable that Avery met Sarah that night, stalked off, and then somebody else raped and murdered her. The odds? Well, you decide.
Dawson, p. 276, says "According to the legal experts I spoke with, the jury in the criminal trial was correct in their verdict" -- that is, the evidence was not sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. (This is particularly true since the jury wasn't allowed to hear all the evidence -- notably, Dr. Wilbur's account; also some of the evidence of the Rawsons, and other important information.) But on p. 278 she gives as her personal conclusion "Ephraim Avery killed Sara Cornell." Raven, p. 121, says, "I think he probably did [murder her], but if I had been on the jury, I wouldn't have been able to send him to the gallows."
Our third author, Kasserman, never makes a statement on the matter, presumably thinking the evidence should stand on its own. Unfortunately, because he spends so much time presenting the irrelevant as well as the relevant evidence, one ends up feeling as the jury must have: that there was too much evidence to keep track of it all.
I think Dawson and Raven are correct, based on what the jury heard, in saying that Avery should not have been convicted. Based on all the available information, though, I think the case against Avery is about as strong as anything can be in that era when there was no such thing as forensic evidence. And I find it deeply troubling that a defense based primarily upon slandering the victim should be allowed to succeed. I'm even more bothered that Sarah, who showed significant signs of neurodiversity, suffered the same sort of slanders that I have suffered. The jury gave the right verdict based on the evidence it had, but it should have had more evidence.
And there's another point. Even if we can't be sure beyond a reasonable doubt about murder, what about rape? The evidence for that is even stronger. Let's not rape-shame Sarah Cornell. Ephraim Avery was guilty.
This particular song seems to be fairly accurate in its details, at least as far as it extends in the Forget-Me-Not-Songster:
-- "A Rev. Mr. Avery sure, A teacher of the Gospel pure": Avery was of course a Methodist minister.
-- "Stands charged with murder to the test, Seduction too, in part confessed": One of the minor errors of the song. Avery, or someone, got Sarah pregnant, but he never confessed to seducing her.
-- "First inquest he was set at large": presumably refers to the preliminary Howe/Haile hearing, which did indeed release Avery.
-- "He ran away the law to shun": Refers surely to Avery's flight to New Hampshire.
-- "Three hundred dollars of reward": None of the sources I checked talks about a reward, but the Fall River Committee was prepared to pay the expenses related to apprehending him (Kasserman, p. 120).
-- "Now in Rhode Island bound is he, In May, to await his destiny": After being captured, Avery was confined in Rhode Island, and the bulk of his trial took place in May 1833.
Note that the song ends there (at least as far as history is concerned; there are several verses of moralizing), with no description of the trial and no word on the outcome. Thus the strong suspicion is that it was written in April or May 1833, before the end of the trial.
In addition to the broadsides about the event, there were many books released at the time. One of the earliest was a pamphlet, released in 1834, entitled Explanation of the Circumstances Connected with the Death of Sarah Maria Cornell. It was published by William S. Clarke and Co, and claimed to be "By Ephraim K. Avery." But it wasn't by Avery; he was soon writing letters disclaiming it (Raven, p. 115). His side of the story was published as A Vindication of the Result of the Trial of Rev. Ephraim K. Avery by Timothy Merritt, Joseph Annis Merrill, Wilbur Fisk, Ephraim K. Avery, Russell, Odiorne and Company, 1834. (The other authors, according to Kasserman, p. 227, were sort of professional apologists for Methodism who worked over Avery's draft. It had three parts: Avery's statement at his preliminary hearing; an analysis by Merritt and Merrill of the trial testimony, and an analysis by Fisk of Avery's movements on December 20; Kasserman, pp. 241-243.) Unlike the book published by Clarke, it is available on Google Books. I wouldn't bother. I can't prove it a lie, but the parts I glanced at are both smug and a crummy read. Admittedly I'm biased.
There were dueling accounts of the trial transcripts, from pro- and anti-Avery sides. And Jacob Frieze, writing as "Aristides," published the polemic Strictures on the Case of Ephraim K. Avery, 1833.
The book by Catherine Williams that inspired Dawson, Fall River: An Authentic Narrative (Lilly, Wait & Co.) is also on Google Books. (And I frankly found the way it reconstructed direct speech -- e.g. the conversation between Sarah and Dr. Wilbur are recounted by Wilbur -- simply absurd. No one talks like that! Kasserman, p. 255, calls it "of particular interest" but also refers to its "limited literary merit," which I would consider kind.). Williams seems to have hurried into print, so it has a lot of loose ends (Kasserman, p. 235); it has information available nowhere else, but must be carefully sifted.
There are also some modern novels, Mary Cable, Avery's Knot and Raymond Paul, The Tragedy at Tiverton (Raven, pp. 115-116).
Dawson and a few other writers spend an incredible amount of ink on the similarities between Sarah and the character of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorm's The Scarlet Letter. But the only actual parallel is that both got pregnant out of wedlock by a minister. Sarah was raped; Hester Prynne was not. Sarah was murdered; Hester was not. Sarah never saw her baby girl; Hester bore her child. I won't go on; how many more obvious non-parallels do you need?
National Public Radio on January 26, 2025 had a long story based on an interview with author Dawson, under the title "A minister was acquitted of a brutal 1832 murder. A new book revisits the case." But it's a strange book, sometimes maddeningly so; I would unquestionably consider Kasserman's to be the best available volume on the subject even if it refuses to draw conclusions. - RBW
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