EAST BAY — Sarah M. Cornell’s lonely looking tombstone is a needle in the proverbial haystack that is the 100-plus-acre Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River.

Technically, it’s located in Lot 2733 on the “Whitehorn Path” off White Ash Avenue, between Rock Maple and Kilmarnock avenues. Good luck finding it, however, as none of the “streets” in this maddening maze of a cemetery are marked. (See the friendly fellow manning the office near the front gates. He’ll help you.)

Once you manage to get to the spot you’ll find a thin, cracked gravestone that looks like it would topple with just the slightest push. The inscription reads:

In Memory of Sarah Maria Cornell

Daughter of

James and Lucretia

Cornell

Who Died Dec 20, 1832

In the 31st Year

Of Her Age

The engraving is barely legible, as if Miss Cornell had been erased from history.

You’ll have no trouble finding the stone marker for the woman who, 60 years later, was responsible for almost completely overshadowing the Cornell murder case. A series of painted arrows at Oak Grove points gawkers to the final resting place of Lizzie Borden, accused but acquitted of taking a hatchet to her father and stepmother in 1892.

For whatever reasons, the Borden trial made the case of the “minister and the mill girl” all but irrelevant to everyone save local history buffs. How many people, after all, know about Miss Cornell, a Fall River factory worker whose body was found with a rope around its neck on a coastal cattle farm in what was then north Tiverton? Who remembers The Rev. Ephraim K. Avery of Bristol, who many believe impregnated Miss Cornell only to kill her when she threatened to expose their affair?

But there are those out there who won’t let the sad tale of Sarah Cornell to be forgotten.

Rory Raven, a self-described “mentalist and mindbender” who’s well know for his local ghost walk tours, recently authored a new book about the case: “Wicked Conduct: The Minister, the Mill Girl and the Murder That Captivated Old Rhode Island.”

In addition, Warren resident and Trinity Repertory Co. veteran actor Barbara Blossom is writing a play about the case that she hopes will find a stage in the near future.

Mr. Raven isn’t the first person to write a book about the Cornell case. David Richard Kasserman’s “Fall River Outrage” from 1986 was a well-received account of the sensational trial and its aftermath. Mr. Raven said his book — a quick read at 123 pages — is different in that it focuses more on the story’s human drama.

“Kasserman leans heavily toward the academic and tends to examine the social, political and economic impact of the case,” he said. “For me, this is a story about two people and what happened to them. I always look for the story.”

Gruesome discovery

And that story begins on the morning of Dec. 21, 1832, when John Durfee of Tiverton found the corpse of a woman hanging by her neck from a fence post on his cattle farm overlooking Mt. Hope Bay. (The site is now part of Kennedy Park in Fall River, as the boundary lines changed long ago.)

She was identified as 30-year-old Sarah Maria Cornell, a factory worker from Fall River. A coroner’s jury initially found she had committed suicide, but a suspicious eye turned to Rev. Avery when a subsequent autopsy determined she had been four months pregnant, and her doctor revealed she had confided to him that the married minister was the father of her child. (The minister and the mill girl first met in a Lowell, Mass. church in July 1830. A bit later she came to his house to seek work as a servant before being let go.)

To top it off, a damning note by Miss Cornell — dated the day of her death — was found among her belongings:

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

John Durfee, suspecting foul play, headed to Bristol to seek a warrant for the minister’s arrest. He was successful, and Rev. Avery was charged with suspicion of murder on Dec. 23. He spent that night in the Bristol town jail, now home to the Bristol Historical and Preservation Society on Court Street.

Although the jail ceased operations in the late 1950s, the Society has preserved its two upstairs cells. One is a maximum security cell, but that was apparently not deemed fit for the accused murderer, who was afforded more comfortable accommodations in a lockup room usually reserved for female prisoners — as well as more eminent members of society.

“This was considered to be a VIP cell, and the good reverend was deemed to be a VIP,” said Ray Battcher, the Society’s curator.

The next morning, Dec. 24, the prisoner was escorted to the courthouse at the top of the street, now the Bristol State House, where he was arraigned. After a preliminary hearing the following day — Christmas was not yet a civic holiday in New England — Rev. Avery was released on his own recognizance.

Outraged citizens

Meanwhile, a storm was brewing in Miss Cornell’s home city of Fall River, where outraged citizens formed a Committee of Investigation — ironically led by Nathaniel Briggs Borden, a relative of Lizzie Borden — to assist Rhode Island officials in investigating and prosecuting the minister.

A separate group of 100 or so vigilantes crossed Mt. Hope Bay Dec. 25 aboard the steamboat King Phillip. They demanded that the minister be handed over to them, since the crime took place in Newport County, not Bristol County. Later the angry mob surrounded the home of Rev. Avery, now home from court. The minister may have been saved only by the King Phillip’s bell, which signaled its imminent departure. The crowd dispersed, boarded the ship and peace returned to the streets of Bristol.

The probable cause hearing continued in Bristol courthouse and after two weeks of testimony regarding Miss Cornell’s manner of death and eyewitness accounts of the Rev. Avery’s whereabouts around the time of the alleged crime, the justices made their decision on Jan. 7, 1833: There was not sufficient evidence to prosecute the minister, who was promptly set free.

The people of Tiverton and Fall River were outraged. Colonel Harvey Harnden, a member of the aforementioned Committee of Investigation, sought an arrest warrant to try the minister in Newport County. The warrant was issued only a few days later, but by then the good reverend had fled Bristol.

Col. Harnden, Mr. Raven said, “spent two weeks tracking him all over New England.”

He was found in New Hampshire, then brought back to stand trial in Newport. On June 2, 1833, a jury found him not guilty. Rev. Avery returned to the Methodist church, which faced a great deal of public hostility, but left the ministry only three years later. His family ended up in Ohio, where he died in 1869 at the age of 69.

Did he do it?

Although two separate courts of law could not determine that Ephraim Avery murdered Sarah Cornell, public opinion has always been stacked against the minister.

Although Mr. Raven believes Rev. Avery killed the mill girl, he wouldn’t have voted to convict had he sat on the jury. “Unfortunately there’s no smoking gun. You can’t definitely place him on that night in the area,” said Mr. Raven.

Barbara Blossom of Warren doesn’t mince words, however.

“He was guilty as sin,” said Ms. Blossom. “I’m sure if we had DNA in those days it could have been quickly resolved. She was pregnant, of course.”

Ms. Blossom, a Trinity Rep veteran, co-wrote a play based on the Avery trial that was staged at the Bristol State House in 1998. None other than Anthony Quinn, the late actor who was a Bristol resident at the time, played the role of R.I. Supreme Court Chief Justice Samuel Eddy.

Now she’s looking to re-write the script so it encompasses the entire dramatic story of the minister and the mill girl. “(The first script) was just a trial that I sort of cleaned up. But then I thought, instead of having just the witnesses say what they saw, I’d like it to come alive and give it more energy,” said Ms. Blossom, who hopes to have the new script ready “within the next three or four months.” She doesn’t yet know who will present the play.

Ms. Blossom said Ms. Cornell, who was rumored to have been a thief and a woman of low morals, has received a bum wrap over the years. She pointed out that “129 witnesses” spoke in favor of the minister, while the dead woman’s image took a beating.

“I never considered the girl as the minister’s mistress. She was really searching. She was abandoned by her father and her grandfather and she was really looking for a male image to take comfort in,” she said.

Mr. Raven said it would be inaccurate to portray Miss Cornell as a “poor, betrayed, doe-eyed girl. She clearly knew what she was getting into. She’s smarter and cannier.”

Her intelligence comes through in the many letters she left behind, he said. “She’s definitely a bit of a party girl but she’s not dumb. You read her letters and she’s quoting the Bible and she’s really thinking about things,” Mr. Raven said.

The assumption that Rev. Avery was a conniving and manipulative man who had the mill girl under his spell is probably also inaccurate, he said. “I still think he’s ultimately a murderer so I didn’t have a whole lot of sympathy for him, but I did get the impression that he was a weak character. When he couldn’t control you, he freaked out and didn’t know what to do,” said Mr. Raven.

The trial’s legacy

The Avery trial was found in the eyes of the law to be not guilty of murder, the trial touched on far-reaching socioeconomic issues of the day. The mill owners wanted Avery prosecuted so as to protect one of its own, while the Methodists — already facing public distrust from Protestants — were defending themselves against scandal.

“The case really pitted the church against the capitalist, the industrialist, the businessman. That was big business in those days,” said Ms. Blossom.

Added Mr. Battcher, “There were national repercussions on the Methodist Church. I believe after that trial that the Methodist Church split on the national level because of how factions lined up against it.”

Overshadowed by Lizzie

Although the case of the minister and the mill girl has everything going for it in terms of a compelling murder mystery — a married minister accused of killing the single woman he impregnated — it’s long been overshadowed by another famous murder that took place 60 years later.

Lizzie Borden was acquitted of killing her father and stepmother with a hatchet, although doubt of her innocence has persisted to this day. The murder has spawned a cottage industry of books, tours and films.

The arrest of The Rev. Ephraim K. Avery of Bristol couldn’t have been less shocking in its time, however. “It happened when a member of the clergy was considered incapable of committing a crime of that nature,” said Michael Martins, curator of Fall River Historical Society.

Officially, the Society’s “mission is to preserve and protect all manner of artifacts relating to the rich and varied history of the city of Fall River.” But of course, its biggest draw is the murder that captured national attention in 1892. (The Society’s web address is lizzieborden.org.)

There are a number of theories why the Borden case made Rev. Avery and Sarah Cornell mere footnotes in New England history. Barbara Blossom, who’s writing a play based on the Avery case, believes the earlier trial simply “hasn’t gotten the spin by journalists over the years.”

Rory Raven, whose new book focuses on the minister and the mill girl, said the Borden case may be better remembered because it’s more recent. “But I think this is every bit as compelling as the Lizzie Borden case, perhaps even more so,” he said.

Although the Avery trial was widely covered in its day — “There were reporters from New York, Philadelphia and Boston,” said Mr. Raven — news traveled much faster in 1892 than in 1832, so the Borden case reached more readers.

Mr. Martins agreed. “The Associated Press had just recently been organized in Massachusetts,” he said. “The story went out on the wires. People found out about the case in a much more rapid manner. If the Avery case had occurred later, I think it would have been considerably better known.”

The two cases are linked in several curious ways. A scant mile separates the two crime scenes and both defendants were acquitted despite overwhelming public sentiment of their guilt. In addition, a relative of Lizzie Borden served on a committee investigating the Avery case.

Some genealogy buffs even believe that Sarah Cornell fits into Lizzie Borden’s lineage. Mr. Raven’s not buying it, however.

“There’s often talk that Sarah Cornell is a (relative) of Lizzie Borden, but it doesn’t pan out,” he said.