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Harriet Hanson Robinson, Lowell Mill Girl

Harriet Hanson Robinson went to work as a Lowell mill girl when she was 10 years old to help support her family. She grew up to earn fame, if not fortune. She started off writing the mill girls’ magazine, The Lowell Offering, then wrote books and led the woman’s rights movement.

Harriet was able to leave the mills for two years to attend high school, where she studied French, Latin and English grammar. While there she wrote two essays that typified her spirit: “Poverty Not Disgraceful,” was one, while “Indolence and Industry” praised the honest labor of the poor.

Harriet Hanson Robinson

Harriet Hanson Robinson, mill girl

She was born in Boston on Feb. 8, 1825. Her father died suddenly when she was six and her widowed mother struggled to support her four children. A neighbor offered to adopt Harriet, but her mother replied, “No; while I have one meal of victuals a day, I will not part with my children.”

Harriet wondered for years what ‘victuals’ meant.

Her mother tried to run a small store selling candy, food and firewood. The family lived in a room at the back of the store, five of them in one bed. Though friends helped out, she couldn’t make a go of it.

Finally, Harriet’s aunt invited her to come to Lowell, Mass., to run a boardinghouse for mill girls. The giant textile mills then hired Yankee farm girls under a paternalistic system that paid them decently, worked them long hours and supervised their lives closely.

Mill Girls

In the early years of the Lowell mills, the mill girls could take advantage of cultural offerings: libraries, concerts, improvement circles and lectures by people like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Harriet recalled how the mill girls would attach poems and hymns to their looms and frames so they could memorize them while they worked.

Working conditions in the mills deteriorated over time, and the mill owners replaced the Yankee mill girls with immigrant families who were exploited and abused. When Harriet Hanson Robinson worked in the mills, though, the mill girls were respected, even admired.

Mill girls’ boardinghouse in Lowell

Harriet went to work as a bobbin doffer, removing full bobbins of thread and replacing them with empty ones. It wasn’t hard work, requiring only about 15 minutes of actual labor every hour, and she could read or play during her spare time.

When Harriet was 11, the mill owners raised the mill girls’ boarding charges, which equaled a 12.5 percent pay cut. The mill girls went on strike, or ‘turn out,’ as they called it. In her autobiography, Loom and Spindle, Harriet Hanson Robinson wrote the girls in the upper rooms walked off the job, shutting down the mill.

Doffers and spinners in a South Carolina textile mill. Photo by Lewis Hine, By Lewis Hine – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16100329.

Turnout

She wrote, “Then, when the girls in my room stood irresolute, uncertain what to do, asking each other, “Would you?” or “Shall we turn out?” and not one of them having the courage to lead off, I, who began to think they would not go out, after all their talk, became impatient, and started on ahead, saying, with childish bravado, “I don’t care what you do, I am going to turn out, whether any one else does or not”; and I marched out, and was followed by the others.”

Sarah Bagley, an important labor leader in her own right, also took part in the strike.

The mill girls’ magazine

Not only did the strike fail, but Harriet’s mother lost her job in retaliation for her daughter’s action. Still, Harriet Hanson Robinson wrote years later that it was the proudest moment of her life, and would be exceeded only when women got the right to vote. She didn’t live long enough to see it.

Offering

Harriet continued to work in the mills, rising to spinner and drawing-in girl. She fought to attend Lowell High School for two years, then afterward she returned to the mills. She wrote stories and poetry for the Offering, the first magazine in the world written exclusively by women, and which had supporters throughout the country.

One of the best writers, wrote Harriet, was Betsey Guppy Chamberlain, an Indian who published some of the first criticisms of her people’s treatment. Lucy Larcom, another talented writer, also wrote for the Offering.

“The fame of The Lowell Offering caused the mill girls to be considered very desirable for wives,” wrote Harriet. “Young men came from near and far to pick and choose for themselves, and generally with good success.”

At 23 she married William Stevens Robinson, a journalist who strongly opposed slavery. A poem she submitted to his newspaper had first attracted him to her.

His opinions made it hard for him to keep a job and the couple often struggled. They lived for a while in Concord, Mass., where Thoreau occasionally called on them. Harriet thought he shouldn’t have wasted his abilities and suspected his mother had fed him while he stayed in his cabin at Walden.

They moved to Malden, Mass., and had four children, three of whom lived to adulthood. In 1862, William got a good job as clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, which he would hold for 11 years until then-U.S. Rep. Benjamin Butler forced him out.

Suffragist

At 51, Harriet Hanson Robinson became a widow when William died after a long illness. She rented out rooms to support her mother and three daughters and wrote books, including Loom and Spindle , still in print.

By then she joined the suffrage movement. She and her daughter, Harriet Lucy Robinson Shattuck, organized the National Woman Suffrage Association of Massachusetts and helped Julia Ward Howe form the New England Women’s Club. A powerful advocate for women’s rights as a writer and speaker, she testified before the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage in Congress.

Harriet Hanson Robinson lived to be 86. She died at home in Malden on Dec. 22, 1911.

This story about Harriet Hanson Robinson was updated in 2022.

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Child Labor Exposed: The Legacy of Photographer Lewis Hine

A camera made an improbable weapon against the growing evil of child labor in the early 20th century. Then, children as young as five years old worked long hours in dirty, dangerous canneries and mills in New England.

Lewis Wickes Hine, a former schoolteacher, cleverly faked his way into places where he wasn’t welcome. Then he took photos of scenes that weren’t meant to be seen. He traveled hundreds of thousands of miles, exposing himself to great danger. His exertions ultimately received their reward with a law banning child labor in 1938.

Lewis Hine with Michael McNelis, 8-year-old newsboy. Michael had just recovered from his second attack of pneumonia. He was found selling papers in a rainstorm. Philadelphia, Pa.

He was born in Oshkosh, Wisc., on Sept. 26, 1874, and came late to photography. He was a 30-year-old prep school teacher at the Fieldston School in New York City when he got a bright idea: He would bring his students to Ellis Island to photograph the thousands of immigrants who arrived every day. Over five years he took more than 200 plates. More importantly, though, he realized he could use photography to try to end child labor.

“There are two things I wanted to do. I wanted to show the things that had to be corrected. I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated,” he said.

Child Labor Committee

In 1908, Hine got a job for the National Child Labor Committee, reformers who fought the growing practice of child labor.

Between 1880 and 1900, the number of children between 5 and 10 working for wages had increased by 50 percent. One in six small children were then mining coal, running spinning machines, selling newspapers on the street or otherwise gainfully employed. They were robbed of an education and a childhood, trapped in a downward spiral of poverty.

Newsies, telegraph messengers and young mill workers were exposed to vice and abused by their employers, their customers and even their parents.

Hartford newsboy Tony Casale, 11, in 1909. He had been selling newspapers for four years, and sometimes until 10 p.m. His boss said his father bit him on the arm for not selling more papers. Said Tony, "Drunken men say bad words to us."

Hartford newsboy Tony Casale, 11, in 1909. He had been selling newspapers for four yers, and sometimes until 10 p.m. His boss said his father bit him on the arm for not selling more papers. Said Tony, “Drunken men say bad words to us.”

Graflax

Over the years, Hine photographed children working in gritty industrial settings that inspired a wave of moral outrage. With a new camera called the Graflex he took photos of child labor throughout New England.

Addie Card, a 10-year-old spinner in the North Pownal [Vt.] Cotton Mill, 1910. Hine described her as ‘Anaemic little spinner.’ Her image appeared on a postage stamp and in a Reebok ad, and she inspired the novel ‘Counting on Grace.’

Hine traveled far beyond the giant textile mills of Lowell and Lawrence, Mass. He went to silk and paper mills in Holyoke, Mass., textile and upholstering plants in Manchester, N.H., a cotton mill in North Pownall, Vt., and cotton mills in Scituate, R.I.

Phoebe Thomas, an 8-year-old Syrian girl, at 6 a.m. She was on her way to work cutting sardines at the Seacoast Canning Co.

He also went to the canneries in Eastport, Maine, where he saw children as young as seven cutting fish with butcher knives. Accidents happened — a lot. “The salt water gits into the cuts and they ache,” said one boy.

One day in August 1911 Hine saw an 8-year-old Syrian girl, Phoebe Thomas, running home from the sardine factory all alone. Her hand and arm were bathed with blood, and she was crying at the top of her voice. She had cut the end of her thumb nearly off, but her boss sent her home alone, because her mother was busy working.

Reluctant Employers

Employers didn’t want their practices exposed, so Hine used subterfuge.

Photo historian Daile Kaplan described how Hine operated:

Nattily dressed in a suit, tie, and hat, Hine the gentleman actor and mimic assumed a variety of personas — including Bible salesman, postcard salesman, and industrial photographer making a record of factory machinery — to gain entrance to the workplace.

Hine might tell a plant manager he worked as an industrial photographer taking pictures of machines. Then at the last minute he would ask if a child laborer could stand near the machine to show its size. He also interviewed mill owners, parents and local officials, pioneering tactics still used by 60 Minutes.

Cigar factory at 205 Atwells Ave. in Providence, R.I. Hine wrote, 205 Atwells Av., Providence, R.I. "Eight year old boy and ten year old girl are stripping. This room is the living, -sleeping-and-working room and adjoins the store. Nov 23, 1912. Very dirty and ill-kept."

Cigar factory. Hine wrote, 205 Atwells Av., Providence, R.I. “Eight year old boy and ten year old girl are stripping. This room is the living, -sleeping-and-working room and adjoins the store. Nov 23, 1912. Very dirty and ill-kept.”

Hine confronted public officials with evidence and asked for a response. He also asked the children about their lives. He told one heartbreaking story about a child laborer who worked in a cannery, so young and beaten down she couldn’t tell him her name.

Russell Freedman, in his book, Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor, wrote, “At times, he was in real danger, risking physical attack when factory managers realized what he was up to…he put his life on the line in order to record a truthful picture of working children in early twentieth-century America.”

Farm Labor

That picture included child labor in rural New England, such as in Connecticut’s tobacco fields and on Western Massachusetts farms. Hine photographed eight-year-old Jack driving a load of hay and taking care of livestock. He was “a type of child who is being overworked in many rural districts,” wrote Hine.

Rural accident in Western Massachusetts. Rural Accident. Twelve-year old Clinton Stewart and his mowing machine which cut off his hand. See Hine Report, August 1915.

By 1912, the NCLC persuaded Congress to create a United States Children’s Bureau in the Department of Labor and Department of Commerce. The Children’s Bureau also worked closely with the NCLC to investigate abuses of child labor.

Years of political battles followed, until finally in 1938 Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. The law prohibits any interstate commerce of goods produced by children under the age of 16. President Franklin D. Roosevel t signed it into law on June 25, 1938.

Rejected

A Typical Fisher Boy at “T” Wharf. Boston.

By then, the public had lost interest in Lewis Hine’s work. He died two years later, broke, in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. His son offered to donate his photographs to the Museum of Modern Art, but MOMA rebuffed him. Today, Hine’s photographs of child labor belong to collections at the Library of Congress and the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y.

The National Child Labor Committee Collection at the Library of Congress consists of more than 5,100 photographic prints and 355 glass negatives.

And today a Lewis Hine award goes to people who have done outstanding work in helping young people.

Learn more about the immigrant experience in this new book about the history of the Irish people. Available now from Amazon in paperback or as an ebook. Click here to order.

This story about child labor was updated in 2022. All photos courtesy National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

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Bridgeport Women Workers Strike for the Eight Hour Day

On one summer day in 1915, thousands of women walked off the job in Bridgeport, Conn., demanding the eight hour day and higher wages. It didn’t take long for the stunned managers of munitions plants, garment factories and laundries to cave in to their demands. Within months, arms factories throughout the Northeast granted their workers the eight hour day.

At the time, thousands of women were working in Bridgeport’s factories after World War I and the Russian Revolution broke out in Europe. The conflicts created enormous demand for arms, ammunition, machines to make them – and for the labor to work the machines. Bridgeport’s vast munitions plants couldn’t hire enough workers to churn out artillery shells and small arms, bullets and armored cars. The labor shortage gave women leverage over their employers, and they used it.

Much like today’s low-wage worker strikes, the Bridgeport walkouts were short, sudden and staged by non-union workers.

The eight hour day was not a new idea. As far back as 1791, Philadelphia carpenters struck for a 10 hour workday. By the 1870s, “Eight Hour Leagues” sprang up, staging rallies and parades all across the country. In 1877, Pennsylvania eight hour advocates working on the railroad drove a locomotive into a roundhouse full of Pinkerton detectives, and in 1885 the Chicago Haymarket was bombed during a rally for the eight hour day. Slowly, the eight hour day was achieved in scattered cities and towns — by coal miners, ship carpenters, printers and building trades workers. Still, in 1915 the vast majority of employees worked 12 hour days in America.

Arsenal of World War I

The Bridgeport strikes actually started an ocean away, indirectly. The wars in Europe transformed Bridgeport from a city of idled factories and unemployed workers to a boomtown badly in need of labor. European immigrants were no longer flooding into Ellis Island, and many were returning to their home countries to fight the war.

Bridgeport woman working in munitions factory in 1815

Bridgeport woman working in munitions factory in 1915

Bridgeport was a manufacturing center for milling machines, brass fittings, carriages, sewing machines, white goods (shirts and corsets), saddles and – most of all – guns and ammunition. After the war broke out, workers rushed to Bridgeport to get jobs in the munitions plants. In six months, job seekers swelled the population of Bridgeport by 25 percent, to 125,000. By 1916, the population ballooned to 150,000. There wasn’t enough housing for the newcomers. Single men crowded into boardinghouses, and men who brought their families had to return home.

The war required a staggering amount of materiel. The American-British Company ordered $2.5 million worth of shrapnel shells for Russia. The Locomobile Company was making hundreds of three-ton trucks for England. The Remington Arms Company, which had just merged with the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, was building a 102-acre plant to fill the Russian tsar’s $168 million order for rifles. Remington Arms would be the largest arms plant in the world under one roof, and the company would hire 17,000 workers to produce artillery shells, ammunition, the Colt automatic pistol and the Enfield rifle.

The agitation for the eight hour day started with the building trades workers. In the tremendous expansion of factories for the war effort, building trades union members did dangerous, demanding physical labor for long hours. By March 1915 they were fed up. In the early spring, they walked off the job, demanding an eight hour day and union recognition.

The Eight Hour Day Reaches Bridgeport

With World War I and the Russian Revolution grinding away that spring, the orders kept coming in for more rifles, saddles, armored cars, ammunition and small arms. Remington Arms couldn’t find enough workers. Finally, management decided to hire the women of Bridgeport, then employed in department stores and garment factories.

The now-abandoned Remington Arms plant in Bridgeport, Conn.

When they found they could raise their wages from $6 to $8 a week to $10 a week in the munitions plants, thousands of women fled their sewing machines and their shop counters. By August, 5,000 women worked in the Remington factory alone, drawing out brass cartridges, filling cartridges with powder, inspecting rifle parts and running wire-winding machines.

The work was automated and didn’t require much skill, but the machines required steady maintenance. Munitions plant managers needed skilled machinists to automate and repair the equipment. The International Association of Machinists decided to seize the opportunity and build its membership.

Tired of Toil for Naught

The IAM used the campaign for the eight hour day to appeal to new members. It worked. The IAM’s General Vice President Pete Conlon said, “Everyone has the fever and all you can hear is eight hours. The sidewalks, the telegraph poles and even the office steps of the factories are chalked in large letters ‘WE WANT EIGHT HOURS’.”

The IAM leaders decided to begin their membership drive at the Remington factory. Walter Penfield, the retired army major in charge of construction, got wind of a planned strike. He was convinced the strike was a German plot to hurt the allied cause. Newspaper publishers gladly amplified the canard, running headlines like “Penfield Reiterates Strike Is Aimed at Allies.”

His bluster didn’t stop talk of a strike. Penfield was in a tough spot, as Remington had to fill Russia’s enormous order for rifles. So in July he caved in to the workers’ demand for eight hour days, without a pay cut. But union recognition was out of the question, as was any written contract guaranteeing the shorter hours.

Strike

So the IAM leadership called for a strike at Remington Arms at noon on July 20. As the hour approached, a crowd gathered in front of the plant: reporters, spectators, IAM leaders and most of Bridgeport’s police force. The noon whistle blew — and no one emerged from the building. An hour passed, and still no one walked out. The IAM leaders paced the sidewalk, wondering what happened to their men.

Penfield had gathered the machinists and promised them a permanent eight hour day and a $1-an-hour raise. Then he ordered a meal from the company restaurant and left the workers alone to talk among themselves. They decided not to strike. Then the unexpected happened.

Strikers in 1915 Bridgeport demanding the 8 hour workday

At the UMC plant nearby, 100 women walked off the job at the noon whistle. They put on their hats, a sure sign they weren’t coming back, and left the building. As the crowd cheered, they walked up and down in front of the factory. Finally the manager came out and told them they’d get a 65-cents-an-hour raise and an eight hour day if they returned to work quietly. The women went back inside the building and took off their hats.

Within hours of the Remington Company’s capitulation, another arms manufacturer announced the eight hour day for its workers: the E.W. Bliss Co., which made torpedoes for the U.S. Navy, across the Long Island Sound in Brooklyn.

Uprising

Then followed a massive, unexpected uprising of unskilled immigrant workers – mostly women. On August 10, 3,000 Hungarian, Polish and Italian women walked out of the Warner Corset Company, nearly all the employees of the firm that had introduced the brassiere to the world. The women marched down the street to Eagle Hall, and announced to the American Federation of Labor that they wanted a union organizer to help them get the eight hour day, union recognition, a pay hike and an end to child labor.

A middle-aged organizer from New York got ahead of the parade that had started without her. Mrs. Mary Scully — described as a “jolly feminine agitator” and “a scream for fun” – helped the Warner Corset Company women bargain with management. After three days, they got all they wanted. Scully then tried to organize workers at other factories.

Wildcat Strikes

The Warner women’s success led to the tumultuous events of August 20.

Another Bridgeport company, Bryant Electric, had given male workers the eight hour day, but women were still working 60 hour weeks. On Aug. 20, 500 women and a few men walked off their jobs at Bryant without making any demands. The company tried to ignore them. But then two other companies threatened by strikes – the Turnbull Company and the Wolverine Motor Company – gave in to their workers’ demands.

Two hours after the Bryant Co. workers walked out, the Star Shirt Company workers struck. Work then stopped at the Connecticut Electric Manufacturing Co., the Electric Cable Co. and the Crawford Laundry. The Bryant workers came back and demanded the eight hour day. The Salts Textile Company workers walked off the job.

Then the women at the Remington Arms Factory joined the strike. Scully had started to organize them. Exasperated by the walkout, she tried to persuade them to go back to work. “I cannot have more than one strike at a time,” she said. “If you want the eight hour day, just wait until I can get it for you the right way.“

They stayed out, and they won. In August alone, 12,000 Bridgeport women won the eight hour day, mostly without AFL involvement. They stopped work at corset factories, textile mills, rubber shops, graphaphone companies and laceworks. Within 2-1/2 months, 55 strikes were called.

By the end of September, the majority of the strikes were settled, with employers generally agreeing to shorter workweeks, time-and-a-half for overtime, higher base pay and double time for Sunday. Many employers made concessions before the workers went on strike. The jubilant workers celebrated their victory with a parade, floats and a steamer excursion.

The Women of Bridgeport

One year later, a customer walked into one of Bridgeport’s largest stores and asked a saleswoman, “Have you the eight hour day?” “Sure, we have,” she replied. “Got it last summer with the rest of the town. No, we don’t have a union, but we can always leave and get a job in the Arms Company if we like.”

Organizer Mary Scully told a reporter named Gertrude Barnum that she had “initiated the women of all nationalities into trade organizations of all sorts of crafts.” In reality, few employers agreed to recognize the union shop committees. American management was strongly, even violently, opposed to unions. In 1915, after all, union organizer Joe Hill was executed for a murder he didn’t commit and 20 strikers were shot and killed by factory guards in Roosevelt, N.J.

Mary Scully, labor organizer

Still, Scully put a positive spin on the Bridgeport strikes, telling Barnum that women had succeeded where men in trades other than machinists had failed. “Don’t make any mistake. It is the women of Bridgeport who have made it a union town,” she said.

The Rest of Connecticut

Scully got something else right. She said the eight hour day would quickly come to other Connecticut cities and towns. “It took three weeks to turn P.T. Barnum’s old home town into an eight hour day,” she said. “It ought not to take so long in other Connecticut towns.”

That fall, the women’s eight hour movement was underway in New Haven, Meriden, Hartford and Waterbury, and it spread throughout the Northeast. So did the IAM’s organizing campaign. By 1916, the IAM called 128 strikes in 35 cities for the right to unionize. Membership doubled to 120,000 members; half of them were working under eight-hour day contracts. The machinists’ call for a national strike on May 1, 1916 was answered by 600 strikes that day. That year, railroad workers achieved the eight hour day under the Adamson Act.

We are indebted to several books for this story, including Rosie’s Mom: Forgotten Women of the First World War, The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History and Our Own Time. This story was updated in 2023.

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Methodists vs. Millgirls in the Murder Trial of the Century (Pt. 1)

Everyone agrees on one thing about the Methodists and the mill girl: On December 21, 1832, Sarah Cornell was found dead.

A Fall River, Mass., mill girl, she was discovered hanged in a farmyard in neighboring Tiverton, R.I. – so stiff from the cold that her body would not lie flat on the ground after a farmer cut her down.

That’s about where the consensus ends.

Methodists and Mill Girls

Within a week, a gang of Fall River vigilantes crossed into Rhode Island to the town of Bristol. They then surrounded the home of Methodist Pastor Ephraim Avery, demanding to take him to Fall River — and justice.

And within a year, the entire country talked about this unlikely pair as Avery was tried for the murder of Sarah Cornell.

How did they become connected at all? Why had their lives gone so terribly wrong?

As in most stories that catch fire as this one did, the characters represent more than just themselves. They were case studies—cautionary tales—of just what was wrong with the times. Their supporters glorified them beyond reason and their detractors simultaneously vilified them. Both sides sought a larger meaning to the tragedy.

To those who sided with Sarah, the murder resulted from the country handing the spiritual and moral reins of power to Methodists. To those who sided with Ephraim, Sarah’s death resulted from young girls leaving the family to work in the mills seeking freedom and advancement.

Industrial Revolution

In 1832, the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution tore through Fall River. From 1820 to 1830, the population of the town boomed by 160 percent to more than 4000. Investors in Fall River — and all around New England – raced to build and staff factories to churn out cloth.

New England rushed headlong into its heyday as the fabrics maker for the world. The technology for weaving cloth on a massive scale had been expropriated from Europe. Favorable tariffs and exchange rates protected the nascent industry. The region also had an underemployed, overgrowing farm population.

Hundreds of thousands of girls would be swept up in the manufacturing boom over the coming century. The life of a mill girl in the early 1800s offered the freedom to explore the world and pursue education, camaraderie and a livable wage.

Mill Girl in Winchendon, Mass.

The tension between those who thought girls belonged at home and the advocates of millwork was a constant undercurrent in New England at the time. Critics of the mills emphasized the sometimes on-again off-again nature of the work and the dangers of the cities.

But still the mills attracted girls by the thousands who either wanted—or needed—some opportunity. These girls wanted something other than farm life, a husband or work as a servant.

Sarah Cornell was one such girl.

Methodists

While the Industrial Revolution transformed New England attitudes about work, long-held religious beliefs were challenged as well. The Methodist movement was steamrolling the established religious traditions of the country and causing a tremendous stir. Somewhat more progressive in their attitudes toward slavery and women in the church, the Methodists reached out to include the working poor. The church preached that salvation was there for the asking, no matter your background or sins.

The ability of a man to move up in the ranks of the Methodist clergy at that time owed little to his schooling or family ties. Rather, the successful Methodist minister needed charisma and zeal.

Methodists limited local friction within churches by routinely rotating clergy every year or two. This meant ministers largely carried a uniform message. They rarely got entrenched in local personality conflicts and politics. Thus they were markedly separated from the dominant Congregationalists–for whom church was political, as well as spiritual and social. They also differed from the numerous Quakers in Rhode Island, who eschewed hierarchy in their churches.

Methodism’s appeal to the growing nation was apparent in its numbers. In 1775, 2 percent of churchgoers were Methodists. By 1850, 34 percent of people attending church were Methodists.

All the while, opponents used rumor and innuendo to try to slow the Methodists’ growth. They brand them as fanatics or an outgrowth of Freemasonry. But the scare tactics did nothing to dull the appeal of the vigorous, welcoming church.

The Methodists’ growing market share brought with it tremendous opportunity, as the church constantly needed new ministers. Though not usually highly paid, the ministers were revered by their flock. Often in the early 1800s a Methodist minister arrived at his profession after a good deal of casting about for his mission in life. Ephraim Avery was one such man.

Sarah Meets Ephraim

Ephraim Kingsbury Avery

In July of 1829, the two first met. Sarah Cornell, then 27, applied for work as a housekeeper at the Lowell, Mass., home of the 30-year-old Reverend Avery. It was a departure for her, as she had spent most of her working life in the textile mills or as a tailor. Sarah had moved through a succession of jobs, relocating to different mill cities, finding work and then moving on when the work dried up or she wore out her welcome.

The year 1829 finds her working in Lowell. She had recently lost her job at the Appleton Mill there because she had damaged a loom. And when the new pastor, Ephraim Avery, came to the city, housekeeping seemed a good opportunity.

Sarah had renounced her Congregational beliefs and become a Methodist in 1825. Methodism’s promise of salvation and redemption held great appeal to her. She was a woman frequently in need of redemption because of the social codes of the day.

Put simply: Sarah Cornell liked men. Though she sometimes rebuffed their advances, there are several documented cases of her acknowledging sexual relationships with them, as well.

While in her early 20s, she was frequently under suspicion for having been seen at night alone with men. And these suspicions were a serious problem for her on two fronts. The church frowned on extramarital sex, and, perhaps more importantly, so did the mill operators. Mill girls had to be women of high moral standing. Mill owners often received criticism for employing women. Thus they had a desperate aversion to any hint they contributed to a decline in morality.

If At First…

Moral unfitness was cause for termination from the mills and expulsion from the church.

Modern psychiatry would probably make quick work of Sarah Cornell. Her childhood does not seem especially happy. Her father abandoned her shortly after her birth in Rupert, Vt., in 1802. She was impoverished by her grandfather, Christopher Leffingwell, because he despised her father. Eventually an aunt raised her. By the time she turned 20, she and her elder sister had engaged in a rivalry for the affection of the same man. Her sister Lucretia won.

Lucretia married the object of their affections, tailor Grindall Rawson. Sarah then moved to Rhode Island for the first in a series of mill jobs that eventually led her to Lowell.

Ephraim arrived in Lowell by his own circuitous route. Born in Connecticut, he first tried working as a farmer, then a clerk, then salesman. Finally he embarked upon a medical education before settling on the ministry in 1822. He started out as an assistant and proved an able minister. Each year he won new posts from the Methodist Episcopal Conference of New England, which oversaw the postings. Pleased with his work, the Conference sent him to Lowell in 1829.

A Checkered Career

The first meeting between Sarah and Ephraim is somewhat murky. As he told the story, she applied for work as a housekeeper, but he did not hire her. A contemporary of his testified much later that he had hired the girl to work in his home, but dismissed her within a week.

In both tellings of events, Ephraim’s wife put an end to any prospect of Sarah working in their home. Ephraim reports that she simply didn’t like the look of the girl. His colleague reported that Ephraim’s excessive attentions to Sarah prompted the quick dismissal.

In either case, Sarah took the idea of working as a housekeeper with her to Lynn, Mass. There, Lowell’s former Methodist pastor had recently been assigned. In that city, the pastor arranged work for her, but she quickly lost her job on suspicion of thievery. It was a new blotch on Sarah’s record that already included an instance of shoplifting in Providence.

Back to Lowell

french-canadian-textile-workers-lowell-mill

Lowell textile mills

Forced to leave Lynn or face legal action, Sarah then returned to Lowell and the Appleton Mill. She persuaded the manager to give her another chance. He reinstated her on probation, but her problems soon worsened. As bad as breaking the equipment was, it was not nearly as serious as bringing scandal on the mill. And soon after returning to the mill, the management heard a new story of Sarah’s recklessness with men.

This instance involved a particular suitor, a reputable counting-house clerk who Sarah hoped to marry. The relationship foundered, however. Stories of sightings of Sarah and the man in taverns began to spread.

When confronted, Sarah acknowledged to Ephraim Avery her involvement with multiple men. She spelled out her transgressions in several letters to him in hopes the confession would prompt mercy from her church. The admission, however, resulted in a church trial. By September of 1830 the church expelled her and she lost her job at the mill.

Sarah then moved to New Hampshire, seeking work first in Dover and then Somersworth. She couldn’t gain admission to the Methodist church in either community, however, because of word from Ephraim Avery. Adding to her past difficulties, he now told local ministers that Sarah left Lowell owing a doctor for gonorrhea treatment.

Back To Normal?

As she sought a fresh start, some friends say Sarah began to express anger at Avery for injuring her reputation. Her sister and brother-in-law helped return her to a more normal life in May of 1832. By then, Lucretia and Sarah had made up their differences.

Lucretia invited Sarah to take a position with her husband, Grindall, in his tailor’s shop in Woodstock, Conn. She thrived in this job, winning Grindall Rawson’s confidence.

Now, with the imprimatur of the Rawson family behind her, Sarah could again join the community of Methodists, this time in Woodstock. Though not a full member of the church, it gave her standing to participate in church social and religious activities.

With her affiliation renewed and her fortunes restored, Sarah announced her plans to attend a camp meeting of Methodists in August at Thompson, Conn.

Part 2: Did Connecticut Methodist Camp Meeting Frolic Lead to Massachusetts Murder?

This story about Methodists and mill girls was updated in 2022.

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