Ephraim Avery Trial: 1833 - A Crime In A Changing New England

New England in the 1820s and 1830s was going through a tremendous transformation. The Industrial Revolution had begun and thousands of people were moving from the farms into the cities. For the first time, young women could leave home and obtain some degree of independence by working in the cotton mills that sprang up across the region. A religious "second awakening" was also occurring. For centuries, the Congregationalists with their strict morals and dull church services were predominant in New England, but now the new Methodist Church, with its joyful singing, shouting, and clapping of hands and with its outdoor meetings (that were as much unchaperoned social events as spiritual gatherings), was attracting thousands of youthful followers.

Many looked upon these developments with great disfavor. To them, the Industrial Age meant the loosening of family ties and the exposure of the young to the evils of the city. Likewise, the new religion was not a legitimate faith, but a cult that attracted the naive and simple-minded. And while the idea that a girl like Sarah Cornell could leave the home and church of her parents to work in a factory and join the Methodist Church was terrible enough, the fact that a man of the cloth (even a Methodist) could be tied to her pregnancy and death was proof that the world was going mad.

Other people also had an interest in the case. There were the industrialists whose mills depended upon the labor of women like Cornell. For years, they asserted that the girls were just as safe under their care as they were at their parents' farms. Thus, it was in their interest to champion Cornell's cause, to keep her name from being dragged through the mud, and to find her killer. The Methodist Church, on the other hand, was trying hard to win both respectability and converts and it could not afford to have one of its ministers found guilty of scandal and murder. As a result, both groups contributed great amounts of time, money, and manpower to the prosecution (or defense) of the Reverend Avery and helped find many of the witnesses who would later testify at his trial.