Sarah Maria Cornell

An 1833 print illustrating the widely held belief that Avery was guilty of the murder of Sarah M. Cornell, despite his acquittal.

Sarah Maria Cornell (May 3, 1803 – December 20, 1832) was a Fall River, Massachusetts, mill worker whose corpse was found hanging from a stackpole on the farm of John Durfee in nearby Tiverton, Rhode Island on December 21, 1832. Her death was at first thought to be a suicide. After an autopsy, it was discovered she was pregnant. Methodist minister Ephraim K. Avery would be suspected of her pregnancy and tried for her murder, in a trial that would engage local industrialists against the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Although Avery would be acquitted for the murder, he was forever scorned in the eyes of the public.

Biography Sarah Maria Cornell was born on May 3, 1803, likely in Rupert, Vermont to James and Lucretia (Leffingwell) Cornell. Lucretia had been born well-off in an old Puritan family, the daughter of a Connecticut merchant and paper maker. However she had been disowned by her father after she married James Cornell, who had worked in his paper mill, and of whom he did not approve. James abandoned the family when Cornell was a baby, forcing her mother to give up her older sister and brother to relatives as she was financially unable to care for three children. Cornell remained with her mother to age eleven when she moved in with her aunt Joanna, in Norwich, Connecticut. Later in her teens, she apprenticed as a tailor. In 1820 she moved to nearby Bozrahville and worked as a tailor for about two years. Later discovered among her personal effects at the Hathaway residence was a note written by Cornell and dated the same day as her death: "If I should be missing, enquire of the Rev. Mr. Avery of Bristol, he will know where I am."

Other suspicious and incriminating letters were also discovered, as well as a conversation she had had with a doctor indicating the married Avery was the father of her unborn child. A coroner's jury was convened in Tiverton before any autopsy had been performed. This jury found that Cornell had "committed suicide by hanging herself upon a stake ... and was influenced to commit said crime by the wicked conduct of a married man."

After the autopsy was performed, it was discovered that Cornell had been four months pregnant at the time of her death. A second coroner's jury was convened, this time in Bristol, Rhode Island. This jury overruled the earlier finding of suicide and accused Ephraim Kingsbury Avery, a married Methodist minister, as the "principal or accessory" in her death. Avery was quickly arrested on a charge of murder, but just as quickly set free on his own recognizance.

Cornell's pregnancy led another Methodist minister to reject the responsibility of burying her the second time (she already once been exhumed for autopsy). He died on October 23, 1869.

Legacy Cornell's body was originally buried on the farm near where her body was found. However, years later it was moved to Plot 2733 on Whitethorn Path at Oak Grove Cemetery when the farm became South Park.

The story of Cornell's death and the ensuing trial were the subject of the 1833 book Fall River: An Authentic Narrative by Catharine Williams and the 2025 book The Sinners All Bow by Kate Winkler Dawson, as well as the 2001 academic paper 'The Scarlet Letter' and the 1833 Murder Trial of the Reverend Ephraim Avery by Kristin Boudreau. Both Dawson and Boudreau found parallels between Cornell and Rev. Avery and The Scarlet Letter characters Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale.