In ‘The Sinners All Bow,’ a forgotten murder victim gets her due : NPR

When the phrases “Fall River, Massachusetts” and “true crime” go collectively, one title jumps out — with a bloody hatchet in hand: Lizzie Borden.

She was tried in 1893 — and acquitted — for the ugly homicide of her father and step-mother.

In the present day, the location of that crime is a bed-and-breakfast and museum and one of many metropolis’s greatest vacationer points of interest.

However many years earlier than Borden was born, one other homicide trial captured the eye of New Englanders — that of Methodist minister Ephraim Avery.

He was accused of killing 30-year-old Sarah Maria Cornell.

Cowl: (lady) Rekha Gardon/Trevillion Pictures; (barn and tree). Components partially generated by Adobe Firefly generative AI.

“I used to be actually drawn in after I learn the letters that she wrote her household,” says Kate Winkler Dawson, true crime historian and writer of the brand new e book concerning the case, The Sinners All Bow.

“After which, in fact, there’s this ominous observe that she wrote and he or she locked in a trunk.”

In truth, Sarah Cornell had left behind a little bit of proof incriminating Rev. Avery.

The sufferer

Cornell was referred to as a sort, beneficiant lady in addition to a talented seamstress and weaver. She labored in Fall River in 1832, one of many many ladies who’d left their households to earn a dwelling within the new factories that had sprang up throughout New England.

“It was low cost, dependable labor for the manufacturing facility house owners, as a result of you do not have males who’re ingesting and carousing round,” says Dawson. “You had manufacturing facility house owners who had been courting households and these younger ladies and saying, ‘Please come work for us, you will have some monetary independence. And, you realize, you may form of management your personal life. We’ll hold you protected.'”

This was an enormous shift. Ladies had usually married, raised households, and in any other case stayed at house. In the event that they earned wages, it was often doing home work.

“It made individuals very uncomfortable, as any shift in society makes individuals uncomfortable in the event that they wish to keep rooted of their old school methods” says Dawson, “And so I feel the ladies had been checked out, not with skepticism, however simply actually form of cautiously, as a result of with independence comes, actually, the chance of turning into sinful. And this was a really, very non secular space.”

Sarah Cornell was herself enamored with the Methodist motion, which then was identified for its charismatic type of worship: passionate preaching and camp conferences that lasted for days.

“They frankly sound like Burning Man, with faith,” says Dawson. “There’s alcohol. There are actually numerous flirting and positively intercourse, to some extent the place one in every of my sources had stated that there was a phrase referred to as ‘tent infants,’ that means: individuals would get pregnant so typically at these tent revivals.”

It was a camp assembly that ultimately result in Cornell’s dying.

Discovery of the physique

On the morning of Dec. 21, 1832, on a farm on the southern a part of city that was then in Tiverton, R.I., John Durfee noticed a determine hanging by the neck from one in every of his hay poles. The corpse was wearing a darkish, heavy cloak and bonnet, its legs had been bent with knees not removed from the bottom.

“It was 26 levels in a single day, so chilly that her hair had been frozen to her face. She’d been there all evening, which is horrible to consider,” says Dawson.

Durfee yelled. Neighbors got here operating to his farm, together with a health care provider named Thomas Wilbur. He acknowledged the lady as his affected person, and instructed these gathered that she’d been distraught: she was single and pregnant. However at first, he did not inform all that he knew.

The bottom beneath Cornell was undisturbed, and her footwear had been neatly subsequent to her, says Dawson. “I simply do not assume it occurred to any of the lads her that this was something however a suicide, the top to a tragic lady’s story.”

However when the physique was introduced inside, and the city matrons undressed it to scrub and put together it for burial, they instantly seen scratches, abrasions, skinned knees stained with grass, and bruises alongside Cornell’s again. Bruises round each hips regarded as they had been made by massive palms.

John Durfee retrieved Cornell’s belongings from the boarding home the place she lived.

Inside her trunk had been letters — some from her household, some despatched to her unsigned — a vial of tansy oil and a observe written in Cornell’s personal hand. It learn: “If I’m lacking, enquire of the Rev. E.Ok. Avery.”

Ephraim Kingsbury Avery was a Methodist minister, married with a younger household. Sarah Cornell had attended his church, briefly labored for him, and had requested for his assist when questions over her ethical character threatened her involvement with the Methodists.

After Cornell’s burial on the farm, a disturbed Dr. Wilbur revealed to Durfee what Cornell had instructed him: Avery had assaulted her at a camp assembly that August. When she confronted him later with information that she was pregnant, he gave her the tansy oil with directions to take it to finish the being pregnant. However Cornell needed to have the infant. She’d been negotiating with Avery: her silence in change for monetary assist. Wilbur thought Avery had been manipulating her.

Authorities arrested Avery, and tried him for homicide that spring.

1833 cartoon, “A really dangerous man,” depicting Ephraim Avery’s homicide of Sarah Cornell.

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Library of Congress

Two writers and the Cornell Case

A poet, author and New England blue-blood named Catharine R. Williams was appalled by what she was studying and listening to concerning the lifeless lady.

“Sarah had made some errors early in life,” Dawson says. “She had been accused and confessed of stealing some small gadgets of clothes. However in 1830, that will have haunted you for the remainder of your life as a single younger lady.”

Avery’s protection trashed Cornell’s character earlier than the trial and through, “to basically slut disgrace her,” says Dawson. “Every part that you would be able to assume that occurs at this time, occurred to Sarah. And it was the primary time it had been documented in a felony case, the place the sufferer of a homicide has been simply disparaged by everyone on the stand.”

And it labored. With out exhausting proof, the jury had sufficient cheap doubt to acquit Avery.

Catharine Williams attended the trial. She additionally interviewed witnesses, retraced Cornell’s final days and obtained Cornell’s letters from her household. She wrote a e book in 1833 referred to as, Fall River: An Authentic Narrative. Dawson says it was invaluable as a supply.

Kristin Boudreau, a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, says Fall River is a good learn. It is one of many many writings by ladies that had been out of print till Brown University republished it in 1993, and he or she got here throughout the textual content whereas researching. Boudreau has since written about Cornell’s dying, together with an educational paper referred to as “‘The Scarlet Letter’ and the 1833 Homicide Trial of the Reverend Ephraim Avery.”

Boudreau notes some parallels between Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story about adultery in Puritan occasions, printed in 1850, and the Cornell case. First, each Hawthorne’s essential character Hester Prynne and manufacturing facility employee Sarah Cornell had been identified for his or her needlework and charity.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Eighteen Eighties. American novelist and quick story author.

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Common Pictures Group/Getty Imgaes

After which there’s Hawthorne’s minister, Arthur Dimmesdale.

“He preaches in an nearly Pentecostal tongue. So Hawthorne, the narrator, describes him as very passionate in his preaching and really rhetorical and transferring. And, you realize, that was attribute of Methodist ministers within the 1830s, however not colonial ministers.”

Methodist ministers within the 1830s like Ephraim Avery. Boudreau says there’s one other parallel to Dimmesdale.

“Should you settle for that Avery was the daddy of [Sarah Cornell’s] youngster and killed her, they had been each hypocrites as a result of they each introduced themselves as legislation abiding and pious. And but, that they had this different a part of their character that they did not reveal.”

Boudreau says it is sure that Hawthorne, dwelling in Salem, Mass., knew concerning the case. It was within the public sphere for a few years, “within the newspapers, in songs that had been written, performs,” she says. “It was a means for atypical individuals to conduct a brand new trial, as a result of lots of people had been indignant that he was acquitted.”

Hawthorne additionally wrote in his journals about visiting a wax museum, the place figures of Ephraim Avery and Sarah Cornell had been featured in a gallery of killers and their victims. “He says that the illustration of Avery — he appears like an unpleasant satan. And it was stated to be a really lifelike illustration,” Boudreau says.

Nathaniel Hawthorne instructed a sympathetic story about his minister in The Scarlet Letter, one in every of mercy and redemption. However there’s little redemption for Ephraim Avery in Kate Winkler Dawson’s e book, The Sinners All Bow.

The Nameless Letters

The unsigned letters present in Sarah Cornell’s trunk arrange that fateful assembly on the Durfee farm. On the homicide trial, prosecutors couldn’t show they had been written by Avery. The protection referred to as witnesses who claimed that Cornell had stated she might mimic handwriting.

Nameless letter despatched to Sarah Cornell, 1832.

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Melissa Grey/NPR

Dawson determined to current copies of the nameless letters to an professional in handwriting evaluation, Eileen Web page. She additionally offered copies of letters Cornell had written to her household, together with one detailing her conversations with Avery about her being pregnant, and letters Ephraim Avery had written, together with one about Cornell.

Web page’s conclusion: Avery wrote the nameless letters.

Dawson additionally factors out one thing apparent: Avery misspells Cornell’s title as “Connell.” So does the nameless letter author.

Eileen Web page’s handwriting evaluation report, evaluating the nameless letters to Cornell and Avery’s identified letters.

Kate Winkler Dawson

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Kate Winkler Dawson

“I feel that he wrote her and stated, ‘Let’s settle this. Meet me right here,'” concludes Dawson. “They walked over to the Durfee farm. I have no idea if this was premeditated on his half,” she provides, “however she left the boarding home that evening in a beautiful temper, as a result of she thought she was going to get cash. She thought she would be capable of elevate this youngster and that he was lastly going to return to an settlement.”

Dawson thinks they argued, and that Avery might have overwhelmed her to attempt to drive her to miscarry. “Clearly she was combating as a result of there have been marks throughout her physique,” says Dawson. She thinks Avery might need knocked Cornell out, grabbed some twine, then strangled her earlier than hanging her from the hay pole, leaving her to look as if she’d hanged herself.

Sarah Cornell’s gravestone, Oak Grove Cemetery, Fall River, Mass.

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Melissa Grey/NPR

In the present day, Cornell’s physique lies in a lonely grave in Fall River’s Oak Grove Cemetery. John Durfee moved her there after the trial, nervous that the notoriety of the case would deliver grave robbers to his farm. Her gravestone just isn’t removed from that of Lizzie Borden, and would not appear to draw a lot consideration. However Kate Winkler Dawson says it is nonetheless vital to recollect what occurred to this single, pregnant lady in 1832.

“Sarah Cornell could possibly be the younger lady you meet on the road tomorrow. It is a completely different time interval, however the identical story, all the identical human feelings, the identical themes, the whole lot. It was a tragedy then,” Dawson says, “it is a tragedy now.”

Samantha Balaban and Ed McNulty produced and edited this report.