The Murder of Maria Cornell

Unsung History

When farmer John Durfee found the body of a local factory girl hanging from a fence post on his property on the morning of December 21, 1832, he and the rest of the townspeople assumed she had died by suicide. But a cryptic note she had left among her possessions pointed the investigation in a different direction, and the ensuing murder trial captured the public imagination.

Joining me to discuss the murder of Maria Cornell and the shifting cultural milieu of New England in the 1830s is Dr. Bruce Dorsey, Professor of History at Swarthmore College and author of Murder in a Mill Town: Sex, Faith, and the Crime That Captivated a Nation.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Midnight,” by Aleksey Chistilin (Lexin_Music) via Pixabay; available for use under the Pixabay License. The episode image is “A very bad man - Ephraim Kingsbury Avery,” published by Henry Robinson & Company in 1833; the image is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Additional Sources:

• “Sarah Maria Cornell,” The Town & the City: Lowell before and after The Civil War, University of Massachusetts Lowell Library.
• “Trial of Rev. Mr. Avery ; a full report of the trial of Ephraim K. Avery, charged with the murder of Sarah Maria Cornell : before the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, at a special term in Newport, held in May, 1833 ; Avery's trial ; Additional medical testimony by Professor Channing on the part of the defendant, and Dr. William Turner, for the government,” reported by Benjamin F. Hallett, 1832, Harvard Library.
• “Letters of the law : the trial of E. K. Avery for the murder of Sarah M. Cornell,” by J. Barbour, Law Text Culture, 2, 1995, 118-133.
• “Religious Revivals and Revivalism in 1830s New England,” TeachUSHistory.org.
• "The Second Great Awakening and the Making of Modern America," by Kerry Irish, Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics. 78, 2018.
• “Religion and Reform,” The American Yawp.
• “The Mill Girls of Lowell,” National Park Service.

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