Sarah Maria Cornell

Sarah Maria Cornell (May 3, 1803 – December 20, 1832) was a young Fall River 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, but upon 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 what 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.