[From the editor: The following is the second installment of a two-part article from a chapter in a book written by Edmund Pearson, Murder at Smutty Note and Other Murders (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1926). Sarah Maria Cornell, a factory worker, on a chilly day in December 1832, was found dead and pregnant in Tiverton under suspicious circumstances, and for several reasons the Reverend Ephraim Avery, a Methodist preacher then residing at Bristol, was charged with murder and tried at Newport. For one, Cornell apparently left behind a letter stating that “If I should be missing, inquire of the Rev. Mr. Avery, of Bristol.” Second, Avery admitted he had been walking in Tiverton around the time of the murder. What ensued was one of the longest and most sensational trials in Rhode Island history. Some 239 witnesses testified at the trial, with many of them speculating about the sexual history and proclivities of the victim, Sarah Maria Cornell. This kind of speculation would not be permitted in a trial today. This piece was written in 1926 and, accordingly, has a certain amount of bias, as well as hesitancy to discuss openly the speculations about Maria Cornell’s sexual past. The article also did not adequately cover testimony regarding Cornell’s reputed unstable mind. I have made a few omissions from the article that cover material extraneous to the trial or that have obscure and odd references. The omissions are noted with either [ ] or …. Still, Pearson’s article is well done. This second installment covers the Newport trial itself and verdict. The trial was held in the Old Colony House (State House) in Newport, which served as the County Courthouse for Newport County. For a modern and excellent history of this trial, which also gives a fine background of Rhode Island at the time and the lives of New England mill workers, many of whom were women, see Bruce Dorsey, Murder in a Mill Town: Sex, Faith, and the Crime that Captivated a Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023).]
At Newport, before the Supreme Judicial Court, on May 6, 1833, the case was called . . . The State of Rhode Island versus Ephraim K. Avery. The Chief Justice and two Associate Justices were on the Bench; the Attorney General and two other lawyers appeared for the State [i.e., for the prosecution]. Mr. Avery had been provided with no less than six counsellors, the leader of whom was Jeremiah Mason, called (by Senator [Henry Cabot] Lodge) “one of the greatest common lawyers this country has ever produced.” Mr. Mason was the mentor of Daniel Webster; he was six feet seven inches in height, and accustomed in addressing a jury to stand so close to the box that he could have “laid his finger on the foreman’s nose.” Speaking to them in clear, conversational, easy terms, he had won verdict after verdict.
The amount of interest attracted by the trial was extraordinary and was probably not equalled in New England until the trial of Professor Webster [a Harvard College professor convicted of murdering a wealthy physician], seventeen years later. The Evening Post of New York was, at that time, a four-page newspaper, in which a few columns of news on the second page were nearly lost among three or more pages of advertisements. The front page was invariably devoted to advertisements. Yet, one day, all this paid matter was banished and the whole front page given up to a report of the Avery trial. There could hardly be anything more astonishing [ ]. The verdict in the Avery trial was rendered on a Sunday afternoon; and the fleetest stagecoaches being at its disposal, the Post reported the result in its issue for the following Tuesday.
“The first of two prints . . . dealing with the sensational trial of Methodist minister Ephraim K. Avery in May 1833 for the murder of Sarah Maria Cornell. . . . Miss Cornell, a young and pregnant factory girl, was beaten and strangled, and left tied to a post on a remote Massachusetts [should be Rhode Island] farm in December 1832. Avery was tried in May 1833 and despite considerable evidence against him (reported at length in the press) was acquitted on June 5. The artist’s portrayal here appears to be based on published testimony from the trial. Avery, wearing green spectacles, is shown in the act of tying the young woman by the neck to a post before a haystack. Her shoes and kerchief lie on the ground at left, Avery’s walking stick on the ground at right. An owl (the crime occurred at night) perches on one of the posts, and on and about the hut are demons, who speak: “Do you see what is going on here.” “I never sleep on such occasions.” “How will this be managed if it should go to a jury.” “A Jury ye young fools is nothing. what’s to be done with Public Opinion.” (Library of Congress)
The witnesses were then called, beginning an almost interminable procession. Sixty-eight witnesses were examined for the prosecution, and one hundred and twenty-eight for the prisoner; the trial lasted twenty-seven days, which was most unusual at that time.
To prove that this was a murder and not a suicide, the State relied upon testimony showing that Miss Cornell’s comb was found broken, some distance from her body, and that the cord around her neck was tied in a clove hitch—an unusual knot for a woman to tie. (Also an unusual one for a Methodist minister—unless he had really been a pirate.) Mrs. Meriba Borden, described as “a respectable matron,” and Mrs. Ruth Borden, “a middle-aged matron,” helped lay out the body of the dead woman. They appeared in Court to give some rather unscientific testimony (which was corroborated by Mrs. Suzanna Borden) as to marks and bruises, which, the State suggested, were not self-inflicted. The medical men had little to say about the bruises and seemed to be of the opinion that she died from strangulation.
A laboring man, named Benjamin Manchester, was blasting rocks near the stack yard at about sunset on December 20th. He saw a tall man, wearing a dark surtout and a dark hat with a wide brim; the man looked generally like Mr. Avery, but the witness did not make a positive identification. William Hamilton (“a foreigner,” nationality not specified) was near the stack yard about quarter to nine that evening. He heard screeches, which he called “squalls,” “as of a female in distress.” But Eleanor Owen, a Welshwoman, who said that she would prefer to testify in her own tongue, heard a woman screeching at about half-past seven. A number of witnesses testified that they saw a man, a tall man with dark, clothes, generally resembling the prisoner, near the tollhouse at the Stone Bridge. Peleg Cranston, the tollkeeper, said that eleven-foot passengers went over the bridge that day. One, whom he did not know, looked like a doctor, lawyer, or minister. He believed [this man was] the prisoner, but, again, this witness could say no more than that he thought they were the same.
This is the caption from the Library of Congress: The second of two prints surrounding the scandalous trial of Methodist minister Ephraim K. Avery for the brutal murder of factory girl Sarah Maria Cornell. (See “A Very Bad Man,” no. 1833-13). This print is a “visionary portrayal of Avery transported to damnation by demons. Avery has departed the scene of his crime (left) where his victim, now expired, still hangs strangled from a post. Her shoes, kerchief, and a note reading “If I am missing enquire of the Revd. Mr…” lay nearby. As monsters fly overhead, Avery is rowed toward a shore at right where an inferno blazes and a man is boiled in a cauldron. Avery appears again in the upper right, being forcibly led toward a precipice.” (Library of Congress)
The witness who seemed most damaging to Mr. Avery was Grindall Rawson, a young man of Woodstock, Connecticut. His wife was the sister of Sarah Maria Cornell. He testified, in some detail, that a month or two before the death of his sister-in-law she had attended a camp meeting at a place called Thompson [in Connecticut]. When she returned, she had given him and his wife a detailed account, with the date, of an interview between Mr. Avery and herself, at which she had been seduced. She blamed Mr. Avery for all her misfortunes, and “swore her child upon him.” This witness, although he was acquainted with the dead woman’s handwriting, would not swear positively that the note found in the bandbox was in Sarah Maria’s hand. The two or three anonymous letters found with Miss Cornell’s property were produced, and it was endeavored to show that they were written by Mr. Avery. As the handwriting was not identified as his, all the efforts to connect him with them seem to have been rather futile.
The lawyers for the defense tore this case to pieces. If the State relied, at all, upon the testimony of the man who heard the outcries at quarter to nine, as fixing the hour of death, then the prisoner was entitled to a verdict on that alone, as it would be shown that he was at Bristol Ferry, eight miles distant, at half-past nine. The State did seem to urge eight forty-five as the hour of death, and to discard the Welshwoman’s testimony. It was a fatal weakness in their case; no middle-aged man, with a weak ankle, as Mr. Avery had, ever sprinted across country at night, eight miles in forty-five minutes. Strong medical testimony was introduced to show probability that the death was caused by hanging; and the fact was pointed out that hanging was a frequent method of suicide, but a very rare one for murder.
The focus is on “the old Rhode Island Stack yard” (meaning haystack yard) where Sarah Cornell was found hanging at Durfee’s Farm in northern Tiverton. At the bottom, the broadsheet says, “All kinds of Ballads printed and Sold at 42 North Main street (opposite the Museum) Providence” (Russell J. DeSimone Collection)
Whoever fixed with so much accuracy the day and the hour at the Thompson camp meeting, when Mr. Avery and Miss Cornell walked arm in arm into the woods together, made a grievous mistake in so far as it tended to prove a case against him. His lawyers produced witnesses who were at the camp meeting and could show pretty conclusively that he was far away and engaged much more prosaically.
The medical testimony on the related points was especially noteworthy; Dr. Walter Channing, Professor of Midwifery and Medical Jurisprudence at Harvard, was examined for three hours, both on the subject of suicide and on obstetrical details. The story of the Thompson camp meeting as the scene of the intrigue was shattered by this testimony. Another physician, from Lowell, gave evidence about Miss Cornell’s character; evidence which was confirmed by numerous witnesses from various places. All of it tended to show that [Sarah Maria Cornell] had made accusations, many of them palpably untrue, against a number of men; that she was given to talking wildly and threatening to kill herself; and that she was especially angry against Mr. Avery, and called him a rascal, and a villain, “for turning her out of the church.”
Photograph of Newport Mill Houses, built from 1835 to 1837. Workers such as Sarah Cornell could reside in such housing, close by to the mills at which they worked (Providence Public Library Digital Collections)
Hallet’s report of the trial gives an amusing account of the substantial number of witnesses who appeared, either to show Mr. Avery’s guilt or to darken, somewhat, the fame of Miss Cornell. The reporter makes brief characterizations of the witnesses, so that we learn that Mary Hicks was an “elderly Friend,” that Miss Sally Swan was a “young girl,” and that Pardon Jillson was “middle-aged.” Philena Holmes was “above middle age,” while Sarah Honey was merely “over thirty.” Ezra Parker, and his wife, Ruhamah, both testified. Mr. Parker kept the tavern on the stage road to Providence, and the reporter describes him as “a queer tall old man.” He had something to offer about one of Sarah Maria’s escapades. She came to the tavern one snowy day in March or April. The innkeeper testified:
She looked eight or nine months gone [i.e., pregnant]. She said she belonged to the Methodist Church and appeared to be very much engaged in the work of God; very much indeed. At seven o’ clock in the evening, Charles and William Taylor called for entertainment. Maria Cornell sat by the fire, with my family. The devil, says William Taylor, Maria, be you here? Yes, says she, and you can’t help yourself, William Taylor!
Neither could he; the unfortunate Taylor was mulcted [i.e., a victim of theft] of a sum of money before he left, and this was most unjust, since, as Mrs. Ruhamah Parker testified, Miss Cornell’s appearance was due merely to a cunningly adjusted blanket.
Mr. Mason, in his summing up for the prisoner, pointed out that all the suspicions commenced with the discovery of the note in the bandbox, and that it had never been shown conclusively that Miss Cornell wrote the note. The bandbox for two days was accessible to many persons. He devoted the greater part of his address, however, to arguing the probability of suicide.
Once that could be established, all the other questions of Mr. Avery’s walk on December 20th became of no importance. The defense had been able to cast strong doubts on the theory of the State that he crossed the bridge to Tiverton, but it must be admitted that the prisoner’s story of his perambulations on the island lacked corroboration, except when he was at the ferry house. A man might walk all day in country lanes, it is true, and never again be able to find any person who could testify that they met. But the defense was weak at this point.
The jury were out all night, and gave their verdict Sunday noon, June 2d. It was: “Not guilty.”
Mr. Avery was congratulated by his friends, and then went to the house of Mr. Kent, the Methodist minister of Newport. Shortly afterward he returned to his home in Bristol. The attacks on him continued, however, and to a long article signed “Aristides,” some of his friends replied in a pamphlet of “Vindication,” in the year following the trial. It is noticeable that his friends signed their names; his enemy did not. The “Vindication” contains elaborations of his own statements, and a temperate discussion of nearly all the evidence. One of his friends makes this interesting remark:
“The most difficult thing for Mr. Avery to account for, and that which has thrown the greatest suspicion over him, is the striking coincidence between an appointment made by someone, as appears by one of the letters, to meet S. M. Cornell on the evening of the 20th and his going to the Island, which, as far as the ferry, was on the way to Fall River, that afternoon.”
The broken comb, at a distance from the body, while not fatal to the theory of suicide, casts a doubt upon it. The fact that her gloves were on, seems to me to point to other hands than her own as engaged in tying the noose about her neck. But her shoes were off, and this is a puzzling thing, and perhaps indicates suicide, rather than murder. If a murder it was, there were evidently other men, aside from Mr. Avery, who may have had a motive to wish her out of the way.
A drawing of the imaginary initial meeting of Sarah Maria Cornell and the Reverend Ephraim K. Avery, the Methodist preacher from Bristol. During and after the trial, there was a strong demand for images of the pair (Russell J. DeSimone Collection)
Long after the trial, somebody asked Jeremiah Mason if he believed Mr. Avery innocent. The great and wily advocate had too thoroughly a legal mind to satisfy any such unprofessional question as this. He smiled, and said: “Why, do you know, I never thought about it that way, at all!”
Mr. Avery found the unfriendly public opinion in Rhode Island too much to be endured. He had been sustained in his position by his Church, but he moved to Pittsfield, Ohio, where, it is said, he died in October 1869, thirty-seven years after his unlucky afternoon’s walk. In Ohio, he lived a quiet life as a farmer, and never gave his neighbors cause to regard him with anything but respect.
