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Fall River Mass.

The Rise and Fall of the Fore River Shipyard

The Fore River Shipyard started out as a farm in East Braintree, Mass., when Thomas Watson bought it.

Watson had loaned money to his boss, Alexander Graham Bell, to help him develop the telephone. He was the same Watson who Bell had summoned through the phone with the words, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.”

Thomas Watson

Bell repaid his assistant with a 10 percent share in what would become the Bell Telephone Co. Watson sold the shares and bought the farm, where he started work on marine engines. His company, the Fore River Engine Company near the Weymouth Fore River, would give birth to one of the largest shipyards in the country, if not the world.

Fore River Shipyard

Under Watson’s leadership, the company’s reliable, high-quality engine acquired a reputation that spread throughout the Eastern Seaboard.

The depression following the Panic of 1893 turned out to be a godsend for the fledgling yard. The U.S. Navy awarded two contracts to build two destroyers, the USS. Lawrence (DD-8) and the USS Macdonough (DD-9). This boondoggle was augmented with an award to build the U.S. lightship LV-72. These would be the last ships constructed in East Braintree. In 1901, the yard moved to Quincy Point.

USS Rhode Island, ca. 1904

In 1902, the keel was laid for the USS Rhode Island (BB-17). Launched in 1904, the Rhode Island took part in the two- year around-the-world cruise of the Great White Fleet. The USS Vermont (BB-20) was also built there and launched in 1905.

Fore River Submarines

John Philip Holland, an Irish engineer, developed the first submarine officially commissioned by the U.S. Navy. The Navy launched his sub, called the USS Holland, in 1900. However, the boat needed improvement. Its storage batteries gave off toxic fumes that killed the crew.

John Holland in one of his submarines.

Nonetheless, the Imperial Japanese Navy entered into a licensing agreement with Holland and contracted with the shipyard to build five submarines. After completing the subs, the yard then disassembled them to ship to Japan, presumably for use in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05).

Submarines for the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Fore River Shipyard.

Holland worked on improving his first designs, and came up with the USS Octopus (SS-9), launched in 1906.

The Octopus was the first American submarine built in the yard, but not for John Philip Holland. The Electric Boat Company had purchased the Holland Torpedo Boat Company. However, EB didn’t have a yard of its own, so it subcontracted with Fore River to build what turned out to be 69 American subs up until 1922.

Electric Boat, now a subsidiary of General Dynamics, today has a shipyard in Groton, Conn., a fabrication plant in Quonset, R.I. and a design and engineering facility in New London, Conn.

Pre-World War I

We jump ahead to the pre-WW I years. The thriving Fore River Shipyard built and launched destroyers, submarines, merchant ships and four battleships. Bethlehem Steel, the main supplier for the yard, finally bought it to protect its interests in 1913.

Joseph P. Kennedy ca 1914

The yard then began to ramp up production in anticipation of entering World War I. In 1917, a 28-year-old Irish-American named Joseph Kennedy started working as an assistant general manager at the yard now known as Bethlehem Fore River, later Bethlehem Quincy.

In that job, Kennedy got to know Franklin D. Roosevelt, assistant secretary to the Navy. Roosevelt later appointed him ambassador to the United Kingdom.

World War I

In 1918, the Bethlehem Fore River Shipyard built an impressive 18 destroyers, 10 submarines and six merchant ships. Altogether, the yard built 71 destroyers during World War I, more than all the other U.S. shipyards combined.

Bethlehem Fore River even built a destroyer, the USS Reid, in a record-breaking 45.5 days.

The Roar Turns to a Whimper

During the Roaring ‘20’s and then the Depression years, the Quincy yard produced a whole series of naval ships: submarines, destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers, as well as merchant ships. Among them, the “Queen of Flattops,” the USS Lexington (CV-2) in 1927.

“Lady Lex” started out as a battlecruiser, but the Washington Naval treaty of 1922 ended the construction of all new battleships and battlecruisers. So the Navy converted the ship into one of the first aircraft carriers. When a drought in late 1929 caused hydroelectricity shortages in Tacoma, Wash., Lady Lex’s turbo-electric propulsion system supplemented the city’s electricity.

The launch of Lady Lex.

During the Great Depression, the yard built the USS Wasp (CV-7) and a few other ships. But business slowed, and employment dwindled to 812 by 1931.

World War II

The specter of World War II brought a surge of construction that started in 1938.

Employment reached 17,000 in 1941. By 1943, the payroll at the Fore River Shipyard reached–in today’s dollars– $1.63 billion.

James J. Kilroy worked as an inspector at the Fore River Shipyard during World War II. He said he used the famous phrase, “Kilroy was here,” to mark rivets he had inspected as ships were built. Later, sailors would find the phrase in places like sealed hull spaces. Kilroy later won election as a Massachusetts state representative, and the phrase was engraved on the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Another interesting employee joined the shipyard as a welder in 1942: 20-year-old Florence “Woo Woo” DiTullio. The nickname Woo Woo developed because groups of men would holler out “Woo Woo!” when she walked by. She paved the way for 2,000 women who would work at the yard during the war. She came to be known as Winnie the Welder.

Over the course of the war, some 32,000 people worked at the Fore River Shipyard. They built and launched many destroyer escorts and landing ships from the yard.

They built a second USS Lexington (CV-16) to replace the first, sunk early in World War II.

Fore River Shipyard workers eventually built 71 destroyers during the war, more than any shipyard in the country. To support this output they built a boiler plant at Fields Point in Providence, R.I.

USS Massachusetts in Battleship Cove.

They completed and launched the USS Massachusetts (BB-59) in 1941. Her crew called her “Big Mamie.” She can still be toured today at Battleship Cove, at Fall River, Mass., a testament to the quality of the work at Fore River. One of the welders who worked on the Massachusetts and the aircraft carrier Lexington came from Barrington, R.I.–Leo Caisse, my father, who learned his trade while serving in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Fore River Postwar Years

The postwar years were not kind to the Fore River Shipyard. The world had too many ships. In 1954, the yard did win orders for five destroyers, five tankers and a fleet oiler.

However, in 1955 the shipyard bid on some of the Forrestal-class aircraft carriers, but lost them to the Newport News and New York naval yards. The navy, however, awarded Fore River contracts for the building of four frigates as a consolation prize.

After the war, shipbuilding continued and included some noteworthy ships, including the USS Bainbridge (DLGN 25) and the USS Long Beach (CGN 9), both nuclear-powered guided missile ships. Fore River also built destroyers, frigates, the liner Independence and the supertanker Manhattan, among the first ships to traverse the Northwest Passage.

A Texas Tower

Interestingly, the Fore River Shipyard built two radar towers in the 1950’s, Texas Tower 2 and Texas Tower 3. These were U.S. Air Force Air Defense Command platforms, similar to oil drilling platforms, placed along the East Coast to detect Soviet bombers. Texas Tower 4, built in Maine, tragically collapsed in a winter storm in 1961, killing all 28 men off the coast of Long Island.

Sister Yard

In 1964, the General Dynamics Corporation purchased the Fore River Shipyard. It became the sibling shipyard to Electric Boat. General Dynamics invested heavily in the yard, including a 1,200 ton crane nicknamed Goliath capable of lifting up to a thousand tons.

During its tenure in Quincy, General Dynamics built all kinds of naval support vessels and civilian merchant ships as well as several nuclear submarines. Then it shifted all that work to Electric Boat. From the 70’s to the 80’s, 10 liquefied natural gas tankers were built in the yard. Many of them are still in service today.

The yard built and delivered five (MPS) Maritime pre-positioning ships to the U.S. Navy between the years 1985-86. From two miles at sea, these vessels could deliver and support, with all their supplies, 4,000 Marines for 30 days.

Return of the Salem

By the 1980s, the U.S. simply had too many shipyards, and Quincy failed to win any contracts. That led to the closure of the Fore River Shipyard that year.

USS Salem

Eventually, General Dynamics sold off the equipment, and none of the efforts to reopen Quincy as a shipyard succeeded. On a brighter note, the USS Salem (CA-139) returned to its birthplace to become the main attraction for the United States Naval Shipbuilding Museum at the former Quincy yard in 1994.

With thanks to the Haze Gray and Underway Naval History Information Center, http://www.hazegray.org/navhist/.

About the author of this story: Leo Caisse of East Providence, R.I., passed away in 2020. He published the book, The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. Leo earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College.

This story was updated in 2024.

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6 Places That Used To Be Part of a Different State

For centuries, New England’s borders were anything but stable, and New Englanders didn’t agree on what they were. Maine was once part of Massachusetts, New Haven and Plymouth were separate colonies and Vermont belonged to New Hampshire – or was it New York? At least six places – cities, towns and parts of towns – used to belong to a different state until a border dispute was settled.

Of course all of Maine once belonged to Massachusetts, but that’s a separate story.

Here then, are six places that used to be part of a different state. Or so it was claimed.

Enfield and Suffield, Ct.

The Southwick Jog

Enfield and Suffield — two towns in Connecticut — began their American history as part of Massachusetts.

The two towns’ transition from Massachusetts to Connecticut took 162 years to fully accomplish.

The confusion about which state owned the towns dates back to 1642. With Connecticut seeking a charter from the King of England, Massachusetts officials decided it would be wise to survey the southern border of their territory.

To carry out the assignment, Massachusetts hired two English surveyors — Solomon Saffery and Nathaniel Woodward.

The two men had determined the border’s location by using the most southerly point of the Charles River for reference. From there, they established a point from which they could draw a line directly westward. But when they drew the line, the two surveyors actually placed one end of the line at the wrong location. The result was a diagonal line that extended some seven miles below where Massachusetts’ border was supposed to end.

This mistake set off the 162 years of fighting. Rightly or wrongly, people have pilloried Saffery and Woodward over the years. Some historians had said the pair were drunks, and that explained the mistake. Others have said they were unqualified — that they were sailors, not surveyors (though Woodward, at least, had a track record as a surveyor).

More charitable historians have suggested the instruments available to surveyors at the time were not the most reliable. Further, they note, Saffery and Woodward took a shortcut to their surveying — extrapolating from mathematical calculations rather than walking the land. They had to, in part, because they worked on land the Indians considered to be theirs.

Back and Forth to a Different State

Regardless, at first Massachusetts had the upper hand in the debate (Connecticut didn’t even have a charter). However, Massachusetts had one difficulty in maintaining its claim: it was clearly wrong. Every time surveyors from both Massachusetts and Connecticut investigated, they concurred Saffery and Woodward got it wrong in 1642.

In 1713, the two colonies got together and reached an agreement. Though the 1642 line was wrong, they both agreed to accept it with regard to the towns of Suffield, Enfield and the newer town of Woodstock. The towns would stay in Massachusetts. In return Connecticut would receive unsettled land in Massachusetts as payment.

A stake marks the southernmost point in the “Southwick jog” of the Massachusetts-Connecticut boundary. Seen from East Street in Granby, Conn.

The 1713 compromise satisfied everyone but the people who lived in the disputed towns. They still wanted to be part of Connecticut — probably because Connecticut had lower taxes and a more progressive government. In 1749, the disputed towns declared themselves part of Connecticut. This later prompted residents of Southwick, now bounded on three sides by Connecticut, to petition to join Connecticut, too.

This eroding away of Massachusetts was too much for its officials to accept. But negotiations had to be put on hold while the American Revolution was decided. Finally, in 1804 representatives from the two states got together and agreed that Southwick would stay in Massachusetts. The others would stay in Connecticut. The result was a small, square cutout in the border known to this day as the Southwick Jog. In Southwick today you can stand at the corner of Two States Road and Two States Avenue.

Seavey’s Island, Maine

Seavey’s Island

When Maine became a state in 1820, her 95,640 people lived in 232 cities and towns that had already been incorporated by Massachusetts.

Maine’s border disputes with Canada erupted in 1838 with the bloodless and often comical Aroostook War. The boundaries were famously settled by Daniel Webster.

But it was New Hampshire that caused the most recent border dispute.

The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, created in 1800, lies in the middle of the Piscataqua River between Portsmouth, N.H., and Kittery, Maine. It was cobbled together over the years from five islands, now called Seavey’s Island.

The federal government owns the island, and for decades the U.S. Navy viewed it as part of New Hampshire – hence the name, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

Different State

Shipyard workers come from New Hampshire, which doesn’t have an income tax, and from Maine, which does. New Hampshire shipyard workers had to pay Maine income tax because Maine claimed Seavey’s Island.

In 2001, New Hampshire went to the U.S. Supreme Court and tried to get Seavey’s Island back.

New Hampshire claimed it owned the Piscataqua River to the Maine shoreline. Maine claimed the boundary between the two states ran down the middle of the river.

Unfortunately for New Hampshire, it had agreed in a 1977 lawsuit over fishing rights that the border ran between the middle of the river.

Maine got Seavey’s Island.

Fall River, Mass.

Fall River. The pink section at the bottom was once Tiverton.

Fall River started out as a rural outpost of the Plymouth Colony. In 1694, its southern neighbor Tiverton was incorporated as part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, which by then had merged with Plymouth. In 1746, Tiverton was annexed to Rhode Island colony by Royal Decree. (So were Little Compton, Barrington, Bristol and Cumberland.)

In 1856, Tiverton decided to spin off its northern industrial section. It was called Fall River – Rhode Island. Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court moved the state boundary to create one Massachusetts city of Fall River.

Bellows Falls, N.H.

The International Paper Co. in Bellows Falls, Vt., starred in the final chapter of the border wars between New Hampshire and Vermont in 1934. These disputes had gone on for hundreds of years, predating Vermont’s creation as a state.

In the 1600s, governors of both New York and New Hampshire were merrily giving away sections of Vermont to their friends. The King of England intervened in 1624. He established the New Hampshire border as the western edge of the Connecticut River. This border was largely accepted, though a group of dissidents in New Hampshire decided to secede in the 1770s. In 1778, the 22 New Hampshire towns from Chester to Haverhill declared themselves part of the newly proclaimed Republic of Vermont (after toying with and rejecting the idea of creating a new state altogether called New Connecticut).

New Hampshire took the news badly. It threatened to withdraw support for the American Revolution and to send 1,000 troops into Vermont to restore its borders. Even George Washington had to get involved in whipping the towns back into line. Under pressure from the Continental Congress, Vermont announced it was rejecting the towns’ bid to secede and returning them to New Hampshire.

Bellows Falls at high flow.

When Vermont was granted admission to the union as a state, one condition was that it renounce all claims to any lands to the east of the western edge of the Connecticut River as measured at low water. That settled the matter for more than 100 years, but the Vermonters would once again challenge New Hampshire.

Power struggle

From 1909 on, New Hampshire towns tried to assess taxes on power plants, canals and the International Paper Company’s mill at Bellows Falls in Vermont. The logic was this: the mill was powered by water in the river and, to get access to that water, it had to extend part of its plant beyond the low-water mark and into the middle of the river. Hence the subject properties were in New Hampshire. Vermont sued. The correct location of the border, it now asserted, was the center of the river.

As the dispute dragged on, some novel solutions were proposed – including diverting the Connecticut River altogether to move the border with it.

But swift and steady are the wheels of justice. Well, steady at least. In 1934, the U.S. Supreme Court finally settled the matter, granting New Hampshire ownership of the entire river to the western low water mark. By that time, International Paper Co. had abandoned its Vermont plant, for unrelated reasons, and the Bellows Falls economy was in a tailspin.

Pawtucket, R.I.

Fall River’s neighbor Pawtucket, R.I., comes from the Algonquin name ‘River Fall.’ And when the U.S. Supreme Court in 1861 gave Fall River, R.I., to Massachusetts, it gave Pawtucket, Mass., to Rhode Island as a consolation prize.

The original Pawtucket actually consisted of several towns. Part of it was known as Rehoboth, east of the Blackstone River. Rehoboth was part of Plymouth Colony. West of the Blackstone River a thriving industrial town (thanks to Sam Slater) was part of North Providence.

In 1828, Massachusetts carved out part of Rehoboth and called it Pawtucket, Mass. Pawtucket, Rhode Islanders were not happy.

After the Supreme Court gave Pawtucket, Mass., to Rhode Island, the North Providence land west of the Blackstone River went to Pawtucket. The two towns – East Pawtucket and West Pawtucket — then incorporated as the city of Pawtucket.

A Different State 4X

Windham County, Vt. Vernon is circled in red.

Vernon, Vt., received a charter as Northfield in 1672 as part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. New Hampshire Gov. Benning Wentworth, who grabbed much of Vermont for his own state, gave part of Vernon to another town he chartered, Hinsdale.

By 1779, four states claimed Vernon (then Hinsdale) due to bad surveying and squabbling over ownership: New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Vernon has successively had the names Northfield in Hampshire County, Mass.; Hinsdale in Cheshire County, N.H.; Hinsdale in Cumberland County, N.Y.; and Hinsdale in Windham County, Vt.

But the Hinsdale in Windham County, Vt., had a problem On the other side of the Connecticut River sat a Hinsdale, N.H. The Vermonters wanted their own identity and voted in 1802 to change the name to Vernon. They supposedly chose it after President George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon.

This story about places that belonged to a different state was updated in 2022.

Image: Southwick Job By Dynzmoar – This file was derived from: Southwick-stake.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31670390

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Flashback Photo: Another Side of Lizzie Borden

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Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Borden left $30,000 to the Animal Rescue League of Fall River in her last will and testament. She died at the age of 66 on June 1, 1927, nearly 44 years after she was accused of killing her parents.

“I have been fond of animals and their need is great and there are so few who care for them,” she wrote.

She may have been describing herself.

Lizzie was famously accused of taking a hatchet to her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1891 in Fall River, Mass. She was tried and acquitted on June 20, 1892.

Her father was worth about $8 million in today’s dollars, but the family lived so frugally they had no indoor plumbing.

Shortly after her acquittal, Lizzie Borden and her sister Emma moved into a mansion and out of the dumpy little house they lived in when their parents were murdered. Lizzie changed her name to Lizbeth, bought expensive clothes and jewels and indulged her passion for the theater.

A young actress named Nance O’Neil came to perform in Boston in 1904, 12 years after Lizzie’s acquittal. She appeared in at least 35 films after concluding a successful stage career that took her to Europe and Australia. She and Lizzie became such close friends over the next two years that rumors spread they were lovers. No one can know the nature of their relationship, but they shared a mutual love of animals.

Laura Vestal was a young girl who delivered milk and eggs to Lizzie Borden at the elegant home she called Maplecroft. She remembered Lizzie as kind and gentle, always giving her homemade cookies. Occasionally Lizzie would make cookies for the neighborhood children, but some wouldn’t go near her. Laura also recalled Lizzie would go into W.D. Wilmot’s to buy needles for her record player, and the second-floor staff would watch her from the balcony until she left.

Laura’s brother was Lizzie’s paperboy and said she was a good tipper.

On her last day on earth, the dying Lizzie Borden made sure to give a blank check to her chauffeur to cover repairs to his house.

One hundred and twenty two years after her acquittal, there is no agreement on who killed Andrew and Abby Borden. Perhaps her will offers a clue: She left $500 for the care of her father’s grave.

With thanks to the the Lizzie Borden Warps and Wefts blog.

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Connecticut Methodist Camp Meeting Leads to Murder (Pt. 2)

The following is the second in a two-part series. To read the first part, click here.

Methodist Camp Meetings were key to the expansion of the Methodist church. Part retreat, part homecoming, they often were lively events. A campsite would be chosen and churches from all over would attend, setting up a tent in which the members of that community would spend the week.

Attendees would immerse themselves in a flood of stem-winding sermons, prayer meetings, singing and religious discussion. Religious visions and epiphanies happened often, and attendees got little sleep as they made the most of the occasion. Many reserved New Englanders, including Sarah Cornell’s brother-in-law/employer, found the camp meetings ridiculous. But the mill girl enjoyed this form of worship immensely. It was a great relief to her that she was now allowed to attend the camp meetings again, as we mentioned in part one of this story.

Thompson, Conn.

Ephraim Avery attended the Camp Meeting at Thompson, Conn., as well. For clergy, the camp meetings offered fellowship with other ministers. Because ministers relocated so often, the meetings provided a welcome chance to socialize with parishioners from past assignments. Ephraim, though not preaching at the meeting, looked forward to it for that reason.

By August of 1832, Ephraim had been re-assigned from Lowell. His new parish was Bristol, R.I., an oceanfront community connected to Portsmouth and Newport by ferry. Ephraim inherited an active flock of more than 200 in the long-established Methodist community.

When he returned to Bristol, Ephraim reported that little of note happened at the Thompson meeting. He called it a success. It renewed the spirits of those who attended and brought perhaps 20 new congregants into the Methodist fold. He noted seeing many colleagues and friends, and he did catch sight of Sarah Cornell, he later reported. He said he mentioned to others that she was not fit to attend the meeting, but did nothing to expel her. The two did not speak to each other.

The Methodist Camp Meeting

Sarah Cornell told a very different story about what happened at Thompson. At the meeting, she sought out Ephraim, she would later tell her doctor. She asked Ephraim to destroy letters she had written to him that detailed the scandals that she confessed to in Lowell. Ephraim agreed, she said, but he had a price for complying. She had to have sex with him. Despite initially refusing, she says he persisted and they did have sex in the woods near the tavern where Ephraim stayed.

Cartoon depicting Methodist minister Ephraim Avery strangling mill girl Sarah Cornell. Though a jury cleared him of the crime, the public decided he had done it.

1830s cartoon depicting Methodist minister Ephraim Avery strangling mill girl Sarah Cornell.

By the end of September, Sarah knew she’d gotten pregnant. She discussed the pregnancy with her sister and brother-in-law. Collectively, they decided she should go to work in the Fall River mills, near to Ephraim Avery in Bristol. Once situated, she would approach Avery and seek a financial settlement.

Sarah had two goals, to keep her child and to preserve the reputation of Ephraim Avery. Though Avery’s defender tried to paint her as vindictive and hateful toward him, the best evidence suggested that she did not want to injure him or his family.

Last Days

Prosecutors pieced together the following story of the final weeks of Sarah’s life. In Fall River, they said, she did reach out to Ephraim via mail. She informed him of the pregnancy and he suggested she seek an abortion or find a place to discreetly have the baby and then surrender it for adoption. She would agree to neither. They ended their conversation with the agreement to wait a bit to be sure Sarah was actually pregnant. Whether he agreed to settlement terms, prosecutors did not know.

Ephraim himself mentioned this meeting. But he recalled that they met by chance while he was in Fall River and her intent in talking to him was to ask that he not reveal her past scandals to the local church. He agreed to this request provisionally, but warned he would tell all if her behavior warranted it.

On the night of October 8, Sarah went to visit a doctor. He shared her opinion that she was pregnant. In discussions with him over the course of several visits, she named Ephraim Avery as the father. The doctor was appalled, but said he accepted her plan to seek compensation.

Damned

In late November, prosecutors said Sarah and Ephraim again exchanged letters and agreed to meet – on the night of December 20. The following morning, she was found hanged.

Initially, an inquest concluded Sarah had killed herself, and that her actions were the result of her involvement with an unscrupulous married man. But within days, that opinion was reversed as an examination showed bruises on Sarah’s body. Experts also questioned whether the rope, as tied, was consistent with her death, and suspicious letters were found when her belongings were examined.

The most damning note left behind simply said:

“If I should be missing, enquire of the Rev. Mr. Avery of Bristol, he will know where I am.”

Vigilantes

From virtually the moment Sarah’s body was discovered, the battle lines were drawn. Defenders of the working-class girl formed committees and immediately started looking for any evidence they could find linking Avery to the death.

Vigilantes from Fall River initially ferried over to Bristol to try to pull Avery from his home, ostensibly to be taken to Massachusetts for justice. The Bristol sheriff, backed by local Methodists, stood against them and blocked their way until they left.

The anger stayed at a boiling point for months. Avery decamped to Rindge, N.H. He said later it was at the urging of his lawyers. Outraged public officials called on the governor to put a bounty on the minister for his return, and eventually a band of vigilantes tracked him down in New Hampshire and he ‘accompanied them’ home.

The Fall River committees searched high and low for evidence to use against Avery. They dug into his past, uncovering details of minor disputes he had earlier in his career as a preacher.

But most potent of all, the statements that Sarah’s doctors gave at her inquest — implicating Avery — were made widely available. This included details about Avery pressing Sarah to take oil of tansy, a potentially lethal drug, to induce an abortion. It was, to most of the public, a case that was already solved.

Messy Details

On the other side, the Methodist community immediately began undermining Sarah’s reputation. The Methodist minister of Fall River initially identified the girl as a member of his church in good standing. But within hours, he changed his story, declaring she was not of good character, and the church wouldn’t bury her.

Ephraim’s supporters began revealing the seamy details of her past. They found people to testify that she had threatened suicide. They found two innkeepers to testify that she had extorted money from a man in Connecticut by pretending to be pregnant. And they suggested she had committed adultery with her own brother-in-law.

And, perhaps most helpfully to Avery, they scoured the countryside for witnesses who could help him build an alibi for the night of December 20, for he was not at home then. His story, of taking the ferry to Portsmouth and getting delayed until it was too late to return, seemed weak. But the Methodists found people willing to report that they had seen the minister at various times, leading to one conclusion: Either they were lying, or he would have been hard pressed to be at the site of Sarah’s death.

Avery’s detractors charged that the Methodists operated as a cabal, conspiring, lying and twisting facts to win his freedom.

Astounding Verdict

In the end, the prosecutor’s case proved to have too many holes to persuade the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The letters found in Sarah’s belongings that arranged for the meeting on the 20^th were not signed. Nor could they be definitively linked to Avery. It wasn’t certain who sent them. Her reputation for dishonesty and history of threatening to kill herself helped persuade the jury. And, most harmful to the prosecution, her statements to her doctor were not allowed into testimony.

The jury ruled that Avery was not guilty. The verdict astounded nearly everyone. Avery’s wife swooned when he walked into their house and informed her he was free. Among members of the public, there seemed to be a sense of acceptance at first. But it turned out to be more like a temporary stunned silence.

For 27 days, the country had been transfixed by the trial. The public was fascinated as lawyers teased out facts, such as the color of the paper used in letters to Sarah, and as they picked away at every minor inconsistency in a witness statement. The verdict, at last, seemed to clear the way to the heart of the matter.

Quandary

The furor over Ephraim Avery’s not guilty verdict started slowly. And to the Methodist hierarchy, long-tired of this minor minister being the face of their church, it almost seemed as if the storm had passed with the jury’s decision on June 2.

Newspaper cartoon depictiing Methodist minister Ephraim Avery being spirited across the river Styx to hell for the murder of Mill Girl Sarah Cornell.

The church had paid Avery’s legal bills, which eventually ran into the thousands. And while urging Avery to tell the truth, church officials clearly didn’t want scandal. In meeting with his superior at the start of the case, Avery reported the man told him:

If you have disclosures to make, I do not ask that you make them to me, or to any of your brethren in the ministry; it would be too much for such to witness against you, which must be done; but to some other person.

But he admonished Avery not to cover things up: “I must warn you not to add sin to sin. Don’t do so — on your peril.”

In some ways, it would have been better for the church had Avery been convicted. The hierarchy could have disowned him and moved on. As it was, they owed him loyalty.

Aftermath

The Methodist Episcopal Conference of New England was meeting the same month the court exonerated Avery. The conference launched a review of the case. On June 11, they exonerated Avery too, finding that he had no role in Sarah’s pregnancy nor her death. And on the next day, he gave a sermon at the First Methodist Church in Boston.

Ephraim returned to Bristol by July, and was again preaching. But the anger over his acquittal was incubating. The Bristol Methodist community largely supported Avery, with some dissenters. But the outside world viewed him as a murderer. Whenever he left the safe confines of Bristol, the protests would erupt. Effigies of him hung in Fall River and Newport. In Lowell, effigies depicted him murdering Sarah Cornell. In Providence, a coffin bearing his name floated downstream. And in New York, a play was performed about the murderous minister. And in taverns, songs depicted him as a murderer.

Unequal Justice

The people of Fall River had no doubt that Rhode Island had committed an injustice on the working classes, that there were two versions of the law: one for the working classes and the other for the powerful who could afford a 27-day trial. Methodist ministers throughout New England were subject to insults and public confrontations over the case.

In Providence and Newport, Avery’s name was treated with disgust. The Republican Herald newspaper was the most outspoken in pursuing Avery after the trial, putting out a book shouting their belief that the minister was guilty. Published under the pseudonym Aristides, they needled the hypocrisy that shot through the case.

Questions

Why, if Sarah Cornell was nothing more than a prostitute, did Avery agree to let her continue in association with the church in Fall River?

Why, if the men of the church were happy to believe that Sarah Cornell had had sex with three men when dismissing her from the church in Lowell, had they balked at believing her when she claimed to have had sex with a fourth – Ephraim Avery — when the evidence was every bit as convincing?

And why, when confronted with the stories of her improper relations with men, had the church not bothered to turn up any of the men’s names? Where was their interest in moral fitness when it came to her partners?

In the end, the church had little defense, but could not eliminate Avery from the ministry without appearing hypocritical – again.

After trying, and failing, to continue preaching, Ephraim stepped back from his duties as minister in 1834. He eventually moved to Richmond, Mass., for a time. Then he permanently relocated to Pittsfield Township in Lorain County, Ohio, where he died at age 70 in 1869.

Fall River, Mass. grave of mill girl Sarah Cornell. Methodist Minister Ephraim Avery was accused as her killer.

While his case temporarily cooled the fervor of the Methodist movement, the damage was temporary. The church continued its rapid growth for 50 more years.

And whatever damage was done to the reputation of the mill girls didn’t last long, as they populated New England mills for another century.

End Notes

This article owes much to the many excellent resources on the history of Ephraim Avery and Sarah Cornell. You’ll find a few at these links:

Catherine Read Williams’ distills the story in a very readable text:

Fall River: An Authentic Narrative (Complete text)

Ephraim Avery’s defense, and related court proceedings can be found in:

Trial of Rev. Mr. Avery (Complete text)

Aristides’ Strictures on the case of Ephraim K. Avery (Complete text)

Richard Haslett’s:

A report of the trial of the Rev. Ephraim K. Avery, before the Supreme Judicial Court of Rhode Island, on an indictment for the murder of Sarah Maria Cornell (Complete text)

This story was updated in 2022.

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