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Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell, by Elaine Forman Crane
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"It was Rebecca's son, Thomas, who first realized the victim's identity. His eyes were drawn to the victim's head, and aided by the flickering light of a candle, he 'clapt his hands and cryed out, Oh Lord, it is my mother.' James Moills, a servant of Cornell . . . described Rebecca 'lying on the floore, with fire about Her, from her Lower parts neare to the Armepits.' He recognized her only 'by her shoes.'"—from Killed Strangely
On a winter's evening in 1673, tragedy descended on the respectable Rhode Island household of Thomas Cornell. His 73-year-old mother, Rebecca, was found close to her bedroom's large fireplace, dead and badly burned. The legal owner of the Cornells' hundred acres along Narragansett Bay, Rebecca shared her home with Thomas and his family, a servant, and a lodger. A coroner's panel initially declared her death "an Unhappie Accident," but before summer arrived, a dark web of events—rumors of domestic abuse, allusions to witchcraft, even the testimony of Rebecca's ghost through her brother—resulted in Thomas's trial for matricide.
Such were the ambiguities of the case that others would be tried for the murder as well. Rebecca is a direct ancestor of Cornell University's founder, Ezra Cornell. Elaine Forman Crane tells the compelling story of Rebecca's death and its aftermath, vividly depicting the world in which she lived. That world included a legal system where jurors were expected to be familiar with the defendant and case before the trial even began. Rebecca's strange death was an event of cataclysmic proportions, affecting not only her own community, but neighboring towns as well.
The documents from Thomas's trial provide a rare glimpse into seventeenth-century life. Crane writes, "Instead of the harmony and respect that sermon literature, laws, and a hierarchical/patriarchal society attempted to impose, evidence illustrates filial insolence, generational conflict, disrespect toward the elderly, power plays between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, [and] adult dependence on (and resentment of) aging parents who clung to purse strings." Yet even at a distance of more than three hundred years, Rebecca Cornell's story is poignantly familiar. Her complaints of domestic abuse, Crane says, went largely unheeded by friends and neighbors until, at last, their complacency was shattered by her terrible death.
- Sales Rank: #655057 in eBooks
- Published on: 2014-04-11
- Released on: 2014-04-11
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
If this book consisted only of the first chapter, it would be a satisfying account of the mysterious death in 1673 of a 73-year-old Rhode Island matriarch (and ancestor of Ezra Cornell, founder of Cornell University), for which her son, Thomas Cornell, was hanged. Rebecca Cornell was at home with her family including 46-year-old Thomas, still dependent on mom's largesse but remained in her chamber at suppertime; while the others dined, she died and her body caught fire from the hearth. But the author, a Fordham University professor who's written several books on colonial history, doesn't stop there, and subsequent chapters about Rhode Island society of the time will be of most interest to scholars and local historians. Even those readers may question Crane's methods and intent as she resorts to anthropology, psychohistory and fashionable experimentation with "narratives" to try to fulfill a mission she never clearly articulates. In one bizarre aside, she turns to three 19th-century cases of violent death, each involving Cornell descendants (one, the infamous Lizzie Borden) to demonstrate... what? If Thomas's guilt were unassailable, arguing for violence as a family trait might be useful, but his guilt, despite his conviction, remains in doubt, with such evidence as the appearance of a ghost to the victim's brother and neighbors' gossip. Without clear answers to whodunit or why, perhaps the author's extensive research into "the society in which this grim episode played out" and her proven scholarly track record could have been put to better use.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"A satisfying account of the mysterious death in 1673 of a 73-year-old Rhode Island matriarch (and ancestor of Ezra Cornell, founder of Cornell University), for which her son, Thomas Cornell was hanged. Rebecca Cornell was at home with her family―including 46-year-old Thomas, still dependent on mom's largesse―but remained in her chamber at suppertime; while the others dined, she died and her body caught fire from the hearth. But the author. . . . doesn't stop there, and subsequent chapters about Rhode Island society of the time will be of most interest to scholars and local historians."―Publishers Weekly, 27 October 2002
"For sleuthing historian Elaine Forman Crane in Killed Strangely, the jury's 'willingness and ability to reconcile medieval superstitions with modern evidentiary standards makes the Cornell case a striking example of the friction between traditional Christian folklore and evolving common law.' And Crane's examination of the case in the context of its place and time―1673, 19 years before the Salem witch crisis―is a fine example of the 'microhistory' genre. She found it an opportunity to study 'the prescriptive values of Puritan society' and 'the ways in which people . . . actually lived out their lives."―Boston Globe, 3 August 2003
"This excellent book by a Fordham University history professor presents a true 1673 murder mystery. . . . This well-written, integrated, historical perspective on this mystery fascinated me. Think of it this way―when was the last time you heard about the testimony of a crime victim's ghost being admissible in a court of law?"―Virginia Quarterly Review
"Well written, thorough, scholarly, and entertaining. Summing Up: Recommended."―Choice, June 2003
"Killed Strangely is an engaging read that will entrance and inform readers who are at once murder mystery and history buffs."―Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Common-Place, October 2003
"This book is brief and compulsively readable, the kind of work tailor-made to grip and hold the imaginations of undergraduates in early American survey courses everywhere. . . . Crane's use of material culture is also marvelously adept. . . . Her book succeeds nicely as a mystery story and admirably as a teaching tool."―Nicole Eustace, Reviews in American History, September 2003
"Killed Strangely is itself a strangely haunting work. Based on meticulous, often ingenious, research, it unfolds a compelling story of lives gone awry in the lost world of colonial America. Some parts are highly specific to that world; others are of universal significance. As such, the book makes a signal contribution to genre of microhistory."―John Demos, Yale University
"Killed Strangely takes us to a seventeenth-century New England hearth that does not radiate the warmth and ultra-piety we commonly imagine when we visit picture-perfect historic colonial houses. Rebecca Cornell's hearth was the scene of her death, by burning and perhaps also by stabbing. Was it matricide? Intruder murder? Suicide? Elaine Forman Crane sorts through the suspects and possibilities, skillfully exploring the tensions generated in the Cornell household over marriage and remarriage, elder care and filial duty, money and inheritance. Her absorbing recreation of this one family's history, from English origins through Atlantic migration, from Puritanism to Quakerism, from Indian wars to the Barbados trade, from murder conviction and execution to the birth of a baby named, Innocent, opens a window onto a rarely-seen slice of the American colonial past."―Patricia Cline Cohen, University of California, Santa Barbara
"Killed Strangely is a page turner! I don't think I have ever devoured a nonfiction book so quickly and with so much pleasure. Elaine Crane has mastered the art of suspense; she sets up the circumstances of this unusual case of matricide and only divulges its details to the reader a piece at a time until the puzzle is complete. In addition to writing a superb 'whodunit,' Crane has painted a vivid portrait of seventeenth-century New England."―Elizabeth Reis, author of Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England
"Killed Strangely is an engrossing piece of microhistory, a detective story, and a wonderful 'thought experiment' all rolled into one book. Crane's explorations of different possible explanations for Rebecca Cornell's mysterious death should prove fascinating to scholars and students alike."―Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University
From the Back Cover
"Killed Strangely is itself a strangely haunting work. Based on meticulous, often ingenious, research, it unfolds a compelling story of lives gone awry in the lost world of colonial America. Some parts are highly specific to that world; others are of universal significance. As such, the book makes a signal contribution to the budding genre of *microhistory*."--John Demos, Yale University
"Killed Strangely takes us to a seventeenth-century New England hearth that does not radiate the warmth and ultra-piety we commonly imagine when we visit picture-perfect historic colonial houses. Rebecca Cornell's hearth was the scene of her death, by burning and perhaps also by stabbing. Was it matricide? Intruder murder? Suicide? Elaine Forman Crane sorts through the suspects and possibilities, skillfully exploring the tensions generated in the Cornell household over marriage and remarriage, elder care and filial duty, money and inheritance. Her absorbing recreation of this one family's history, from English origins through Atlantic migration, from Puritanism to Quakerism, from Indian wars to the Barbados trade, from murder conviction and execution to the birth of a baby named, Innocent, opens a window onto a rarely-seen slice of the American colonial past."--Patricia Cline Cohen, University of California Santa Barbara
"Killed Strangely is a page turner! I don't think I have ever devoured a nonfiction book so quickly and with so much pleasure. Elaine Crane has mastered the art of suspense; she sets up the circumstances of this unusual case of matricide and only divulges its details to the reader a piece at a time until the puzzle is complete. In addition to writing a superb 'whodunit,' Crane has painted a vivid portrait of seventeenth-century New England."--Elizabeth Reis, author of Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England
"Killed Strangely is an engrossing piece of microhistory, a detective story, and a wonderful 'thought experiment' all rolled into one book. Crane's explorations of different possible explanations for Rebecca Cornell's mysterious death should prove fascinating to scholars and students alike."--Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University
Most helpful customer reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Family genealogists don't miss this one on Rebecca Cornell
By Cherie
I didn't particularly like the book, and if the person who died hadn't been an ancestor, I don't think I would have finished reading the book. I don't think the author proved anything.
But for family genealogists who have Rebecca Cornell in their lineage, the book is a must. The book provides good background and color of the time period, including many family facts that can be used in expanding your knowledge of the Cornell and related families. I was able to add lots of additional information to my Family Maker. So as a family genealogist, it provided a wealth of little known information and was worth the price---but as an analysis of a killing---I felt it was pure conjecture.
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
CSI in Colonial Rhode Island
By A Customer
Professor Crane combines scholarly insights with an easy, narrative style and wit to make "Killed Strangely" a wonderful bridge between the academic world and that of the casual reader of historical novels. In this she joins the likes of David McCullough and Joanne Freeman to prove that history can be serious without having to be dull.
Like a good crime scene investigator, Professor Crane unravels the details surrounding the death in February, 1673 of the elderly Rebecca Cornell, very possibly (but not necessarily)at the hands of her son, Thomas. But more than investigate the elements of a crime, she uses the skelton of Cornell's death and of Thomas' indictment and trial to create an understanding of the psychology and legal processes as well as the social and familial relationships of New England's Puritans and Quakers. We especially learn a lot about women, particulary elderly women, in the seventeenth century.
At least part of an historian's role is to link the threads of history pointing out to us similarities and differences between eras. Crane traces one of those threads through the Cornell family into the nineteenth century. That raises all kinds of questions that extend beyond the scope of history into the realms of psychology, sociology and even genetics. Crane, thereby, points a flashlight into dark corners where we sometimes do not want to look. In this, she is reminiscent of "All God's Children," the account of New York's juvenile killer, Willie Bosket, and his ancestry by Fox Butterfield.
Because we are of an era that believes in guilt "beyond a shadow of a doubt," we can be left unsatisfied by Thomas' conviction and execution as were, in fact, many of his contemporaries unfortunately for, his sake, posthumously. Crane addresses this in the chapter "Doubting Thomas: Or Considering the Alternatives." Unlike a tv show, history frequently cannot be neatly wrapped up in an hour and the plot sometimes does not end satisfactorily.
But "Killed Strangely" is an easily recomended work whether you are a fan of the History Channel or Court TV --- or simply of Law and Order and CSI.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
A forgotten murder mystery brought to light after 300 years
By Laura James
Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell is a fascinating true murder mystery by a Fordham University professor of history, chock full of early American criminal legends that from a less qualified source one might chalk up as fiction. In a single volume, she touches on two of New England's most infamous murder cases, and a third, the title case, which was strangely forgotten.
At center stage in this gem of a book by Elaine Forman Crane is "one of New England's darker moments,"the death of the elderly Sarah Cornell in colonial Rhode Island in 1673. Weeks later, Thomas Cornell, her middle-aged son, was accused of her murder. But was she murdered at all? Sarah Cornell was an English settler and once was a follower and next-door neighbor of Anne Hutchinson when Hutchinson and family were massacred by Natives. How small was the colonial world. Mrs. Cornell escaped the slaughter - only to be cut down by her son years later. Or such was the verdict.
Was old Sarah stabbed in her room, her body set on fire? Or did she die accidentally? One hopes it was indeed a case of murder since Thomas was hanged for it. The author lays out the evidence point by point and wrestles with the vagueness in the records, searching for answers, the final one elusive, but the exercise an enjoyable one. She did manage to unearth many fascinating depositions and transcripts from the case still in existence today, 340 years later, and they reveal the most intimate abuses and private aggressions in the Cornell family (which, much later, through more illustrious offspring, would found Cornell University). Thomas Cornell treated his mother very poorly, and the people who knew him very well, his friends and neighbors who judged him, determined that he killed her. How much weight should the guilty verdict be afforded? Who's to say?
The legal process used to bring Thomas Cornell to the gallows was fascinating unto itself. The colonial court allowed a witness to testify that the dead woman's ghost visited him in a dream and made some vague allusion to her questioned death. Hearsay -- from a ghost. There is also a description of the "ordeal by touch," a quasi-legal procedure by which the accused was compelled to be in the presence of the deceased, and in a case of murder, bleeding from the corpse would give it away. And yet, despite these curious features of the law, Cornell was permitted an attorney and was not compelled to confess or testify against himself.
Until this book came out, the story "languished in the shadows of historical obscurity," the author says. Amazingly, there was never a broadside, ballad, pamphlet, sermon, or other written record of the case beyond the legal papers. "The literary stillness," Crane says, "is all the more surprising since New Englanders enjoyed a good execution sermon or thrilling murder story."
This book is what Id call popular criminology, a la the recent Science of Sherlock Holmes, though the academics would call it "microhistory". Either way you slice it, it deserves to belong to any respectable collection of historic true crime, and it also commands a spot on the shelf of the complete Lizzie Borden library.
How's that? Lizzie Borden? It seems Thomas Cornell was the great, great, great, great, great grandfather of murderess Lizzie Andrew Borden, who was acquitted of patricide in 1893, 220 years after her ancestor was hanged for matricide. Lizzie Borden directly descended from Thomas Cornell's posthumous daughter "Innocent."
And there's more. Many well read true crime buffs will also recognize the infamous case of a young pregnant girl from Fall River, Mass. named Sarah Cornell who was found hanged from a haystack - the victim of Reverend Ephraim Avery (though he was acquitted in her death, and it was probably suicide). The author briefly explores that branch of the family tree as well.
But what I found most interesting about Killed Strangely was the author's brief foray into an uncommon crime. "Matricide was and is extremely rare," the author remarks. "No other fully documented cases have been uncovered in colonial America, and even today the infrequency of the crime hinders sustained research into the motivations for such violence." Some 20th-century studies of matricidal adolescents are mined for fascinating potential implications for the Cornell murder case. Needless to say, I found much to like about this book.
Unfortunately, not all academics, and not all general readers, like criminology, even when it's called "microhistory." The review of the book in Publishers Weekly was downright mean, calling the passages about Lizzie Borden, Sarah Cornell, matricide, etc. "bizarre aside." It goes on: "Without clear answers to whodunit or why, [the author's] proven scholarly track record could have been put to better use."
Well! A book is no good without clear answers to whodunit? Whatever you do, dont repeat that to the Ripperologists. I frankly like some of my mysteries to be mysterious. It's the mystery that abides: Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, the Lindbergh baby... this long-ago matricide in colonial New England, brought to light for the first time in these pages. We may never know, and we rather like them that way, thank you.
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