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Thompson Conn.

Ithiel Town Revives Greek Architecture and Covered Bridges

New England would look a lot different today if Ithiel Town hadn’t created covered truss bridges and Greek Revival architecture.

The Bath-Haverhill Bridge in Grafton County, N.H. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

An architect as well as a builder, he popularized the Greek Revival style in the early 19^th century, though he also worked in the Federalist and Gothic styles.

Ithiel Town

He was born in Thompson, Conn., on Oct. 3, 1784, to Archelaus and Martha Johnson Town. He studied with Asher Benjamin in Boston. His first known commission was the Asa Gray House in 1810.

Asa Gray House. Photo by By George M. Cushing, photographer. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Federal style house was built in Cambridge, Mass., for the first head of the Harvard botanic garden. Asa Gray, the most important American botanist of the 19th century, lived in the house later on. So did English ornithologist Thomas Nuttall. The National Register of Historic Places lists the house, also a National Historic Landmark.

Samuel Wadsworth Russell House. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

In 1828, he designed the Samuel Wadsworth Russell House in Middletown, Conn., for Samuel Russell, founder of the largest American trading house in China. The house set a new standard for luxury and grandeur and also helped launch the Greek Revival style of architecture in the United States.

Wadsworth Atheneum by Carol Highsmith. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Mansions, Churches, Public Buildings

The next year, Ithiel Town and Andrew Jackson Davis formed one of the country’s first architectural firms. They designed the state capitol in New Haven and, in Hartford, City Hall and the Wadsworth Atheneum.

One of Town’s most important early works was Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven, Conn. Built from 1814-16, it was one of the first Gothic Revival churches in the United States.

The Skinner-Trowbridge House. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Town built a number of mansions, including his own, on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven. Charles Dickens called it ‘the most beautiful street in America,’ and the two George Bushes lived on it for a time. It was part of a development by James Hillhouse, a congressman and Yale’s treasurer for 50 years. . He laid out a road and then planted elm trees along it. Houses had to be set back 50 feet from the street and homeowners had to hire a leading architect to design their homes. So Aaron Skinner commissioned Town to build the house above. Yale bought it in 1978 and restored it for the International Center for Finance.

Ithiel Town’s Lattice Truss

Interior of the Contoocook Railroad Bridge showing the Town lattice truss. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Ithiel Town was an engineer as well as an architect. In 1820 he received the patent for a wooden truss bridge known as Town’s Lattice Truss. It used criss-crossing diagonal planks fastened to the top and the bottom of the structure, which eliminated the need for large, expensive timbers.

The Bath-Haverhill Bridge is the oldest existing Town lattice truss, and one of the oldest covered bridges in the country. It was in service for 170 years until it was bypassed in 1999.

Ithiel Town died on June 13, 1844.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Winthrop Chandler, Disappointed Limner

When Winthrop Chandler died on July 29, 1790, his obituary in the Massachusetts Spy noted that he “could guide the pencil of a limner.” Chandler, like so many artists, faced disappointment in life. He had to earn his living as a house painter. He managed some side hustles, though: as a gilder, carver, illustrator and painter of portraits and landscapes.

Winthrop Chandler, self-portrait

Winthrop Chandler

He was born April 6, 1747, the youngest of 10 children, to William Chandler, a farmer, and Jemima Bradbury Chandler, on the family farm in Connecticut. The farm, on Chandler Hill, straddles the border of Thompson and Woodstock.

His father died when he was a boy, in 1754. He may have left home when he was about 15 to serve as an apprentice to a Boston portrait painter. Though no documentation of his apprenticeships appears to exist, he didn’t live in Woodstock for eight years — the usual term for an apprentice. After eight years, he won a commission, which suggests he did work as an apprentice, according to the National Gallery of Art biography.

When he returned to Woodstock he painted portraits of his relatives and town notables, as well as landscapes of the local gentry.

His work is that “of a highly gifted folk painter,” observed Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, in The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art. Chandler didn’t fight in the Revolutionary War, though many of his family members did — on both sides.

He painted his brother Sam, for example, a captain in the Connecticut militia.

Capt. Samuel Chandler

He also painted a landscape for Gen. Timothy Ruggles, one of New England’s leading Loyalists. Chandler depicted the Ruggles estate outside of Worcester. Massachusetts confiscated Ruggles’ property and banished him. He fled to Nova Scotia, leaving behind his pregnant daughter who went to the gallows for murdering her husband.

Timothy Ruggles’ estate

He painted both sides in the Battle of Bunker Hill.

The Battle of Bunker Hill by Winthrop Chandler

Hard Times

Chandler married Mary Gleason of Dudley, Mass., in 1772. They had five sons and two daughters. Chandler had a hard time providing for his large family, despite a modest inheritance. The couple moved to Worcester, Mass., in 1785, perhaps in search of work. But unlike most itinerant painters of the era, he didn’t travel the countryside looking for commissions. He stayed put in Worcester for five years.

During his time in Worcester his son Charles and his wife died. His other children went to live with relatives.

He scraped together a living painting houses and, once, re-gilding the weathervane on the courthouse. He couldn’t make a go of it, though, and returned to Chandler Hill practically destitute. There he died on July 9, 1790, only 43 years old.

No Bosom of Encouragement

His Spy obituary suggests he was disappointed in life It read, “Died at Woodstock, Conn., Winthrop Chandler of this town, a man whose native genius has been serviceable to the community in which he resided. In profession he was a house painter, but many likenesses on canvas shew he could guide the pencil of a limner.”

“The world was not his enemy, but, as is too common, his genius was not matured on the bosom of encouragement,” it read. “Embarrassment, like strong weeks in a garden of delicate flowers, checked his enthusiasm and disheartened the man.”

This story was updated in 2022.

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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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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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