• Coming July 19th- A Guide to Oak Grove

    July 2, 2011 /

    Just in time for Lizzie’s birthday:  the guide to Borden-related graves in Oak Grove Cemetery.  The booklet contains maps, biographies of people connected with the case who are buried at Oak Grove, three walking tours with maps of how to locate both minor and major personalities in the Borden story, a history of the cemetery, fun facts and trivia, who is NOT buried at Oak Grove connected to the Borden case, and articles on the Victorian celebration of death, symbolism on funerary statuary and much more!  Designed in a black and white “Edward Goreyesque” style, the publication will go on sale July 19th. Pricing and outlets which will stock the guide will be finalized and announced here on July 15th.

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  • Get your Tickets Now !

    June 29, 2011 /

     As posted yesterday, Miss Lizzie is coming home for two performances August 5th and 6th at the Nagle Auditorium at B.M.C. Durfee High School in a production by the Covey Theatre Company of Syracuse, N.Y., according to the Fall River Herald News http://www.heraldnews.com/entertainment/x2108626470/Latest-Lizzie-Borden-play-to-be-staged-Aug-5-6-in-Fall-River

    For reviews of the play and some color stills, visit this link http://www.thecoveytheatrecompany.com/production-archives.html

    Tickets may be purchased online at the link and word is out that this new treatment of the case promises to satisfy the most ardent Bordenite.  Snag a ticket early!

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  • She’s Back for August!

    June 28, 2011 /

    In addition to anticipating the upcoming release of the historical society’s Parallel Lives, August will welcome a new play about the famous case.  The Herald News reports:

    A new play, “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe,” depicting the well known Lizzie Borden case will be staged in Fall River for the 119th anniversary of the hatchet murders of Andrew and Abby Borden.

    There will be two performances on Aug. 5 and 6 at the Nagle Auditorium at B.M.C. Durfee High School by the Covey Theatre Company of Syracuse, N.Y.
    Fresh from winning two Syracuse Area Live Theatre awards for Best Original Play and Best Costumes, as well as the Gloria Peter Playwright competition from Aurora, NY, “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe” left critics enthralled and Bordenophiles raving.

    “Lizzie Borden Took an Axe” will be staged Friday and Saturday, Aug. 5 and 6 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased by calling 315-420-3729 or online at”  www.thecoveytheatrecompany.com.

    Read more: http://www.heraldnews.com/archive/x2108614302/-Lizzie-Borden-Took-an-Axe-to-be-staged-at-Durfee-High-School#ixzz1QatgYTzn 

    The annual costumed recreation of August 4th will take place as usual at the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast on the 4th, which this year, will be a Thursday, just as it was in 1892.

    Plenty of Lizzie on the way for August!

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  • Not Guilty! 128 Years Ago

    June 21, 2011 /

    The Gazette had an article marking Lizzie’s acquittal anniversary on June 20th.

    http://www.tauntongazette.com/news/x536836292/Lizzie-Borden-found-not-guilty-118-years-ago-today

    A welcome home party was given for Lizzie at the home of Charles and Marianna Holmes on Pine Street on the day of the acquittal.  Their house is still standing.  Those waiting outside the murder house on Second Street, hoping for a glimpse of Lizzie, were disappointed.

    Below:  The Holmes house on Pine Street today, the scene of Lizzie’s triumphant return to Fall River, a free woman.  It is now subdivided into several apartments.  In the background, steeple of the Episcopal Church of the Ascension on Rock St. (now called Holy Spirit).

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  • The Distinguished Mr. Jennings

    June 19, 2011 /

    “HON. ANDREW JACKSON JENNINGS, lawyer and district attorney for the Southern District of Massachusetts, was descended from one of the oldest familes of Tiverton, R. I. He was a grandson of Isaac Jennings, of Tiverton, and the third son of Andrew M. Jennings, who was born in Fall River, Mass., in January, 1808, and died in 1882, having been for some thirty five years the foreman of the machine shop of Hawes, Marvel & Davol. Their children were Thomas J., who died in 1872; Susan, Elizabeth E., Andrew, and Elizabeth, all of whom died in infancy; Andrew J. George F., superintendent of Bowen’s coal yard, of Fall River; and Annie P. (Mrs. J. Densmore Brown), of Milford, Conn.

    Andrew Jackson Jennings was born in Fall River, Mass., August 2, 1849, and attended the public and. high schools of his native city until 1867, when he entered Mowry & Goff’s Classical School at Providence, R. I., from which he was graduated in June, 1868. He then entered Brown University and was graduated from that institution with special honors in 1872. While there be was active and prominent in all athletic sports, being captain of the class and university nines. He was principal of the Warren (R. I) High School from 1872 to 1874, and in July of the latter year began the study of law in the office of Hon. James M. Morton, of Fall River. In January, 1875, he entered Boston University Law School, from which he was graduated with the, degree of LL. B. in May, 1876, and was at once admitted to the bar in Bristol county. On June 1, 1876. he formed a law partnership with his preceptor, Mr. Morton, which continued until 1890, when the latter was appointed a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. The firm of Morton & Jennings took a foremost place at the Bristol bar. Mr. Jennings was afterward associated in practice with John S. Brayton, jr., under the style of Jennings & Brayton, for a short time, and in July, 1894, formed a copartnership with James M. Morton, Jr., which still continues under the firm name of Jennings & Morton.

    Mr. Jennings achieved prominence at the bar, and was everywhere recognized as an able, painstaking, and energetic lawyer and advocate. He was a member of the Fall River School Board for three years, and served as a member of the House of Representatives in 1878 and 1879 and as State senator in 1882. During his three years in the House and Senate he was an influential member of the judiciary committee and chairman of the joint committee on the removal of Judge Day by address in 1882. He was active in securing the passage of the civil damage law in the House and the introduction of the school house liquor law in the Senate. He was a natural orator, eloquent and pleasing in address, and a public spirited citizen. On the day of General Grant’s funeral he was selected to deliver the memorial oration for the city of Fall River, and on other occasions he was called upon to make important and fitting speeches. Mr. Jennings had been for several years a trustee of Brown University and clerk of the Second Baptist Society of Fall River, and was president of the Brown Alumni in 1891 and 1892. As a lawyer he conducted a number of important cases. He was counsel for the defendant in the Lizzie A. Borden trial for homicide in 1893. from the outset. In November, 1894, he was elected district attorney for the Southern District of Massachusetts to fill a vacancy, and in 1895 he was re elected for a full term of three years. He served as president of the Young Men’s Christian Association of Fall River since 1893, and is a director of the Merchants’ Mill, the Globe Yarn Mill, and the Sanford Spinning Company, and a trustee of the Union Savings Bank.

    December 25, 1879, Mr. Jennings married Miss Marion G., only daughter of Capt. Seth and Nancy J. (Bosworth) Saunders, of Warren, R. I. They had two children: Oliver Saunders and Marion.”

    * Mr. Jennings also pitched for the TROY baseball team.

    From:
    Our county and its people
    A descriptive and biographical history of
    Bristol County, Massachusetts
    Prepaired and published under the auspices of
    The Fall River News and The Taunton Gazette
    With assistance of Hon. Alanson Borden
    The Boston History Company, Publishers, 1899.

    Oak Grove Cemetery, Fall River

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  • Lucie Collet

    June 16, 2011 /

    The young lady in the newspaper sketch looks to be a very young girl, but is actually the nineteen year old daughter of Georgianna Verrault and Dr. Pierre Collet.  Sometimes her name is spelled Lucy, and the last name in various ways. Lucie Collet was born in Canada Jan 29, 1874 and died June 5 of phthisis Pulmonalis, ( tuberculosis) in1900 at the age of 26. She was buried immediately on June 6th in Notre Dame Cemetery.

    On the morning of the Borden murders, Lucie had been sent over to Third St. from their house at 22 Borden St. near Third to intercept the daily patients of Dr. Jean B. V. Chagnon.  Dr. Chagnon lived in the house on Third St. behind and slightly north of the Borden barn.  Dr. Chagnon was unable to be at home that morning and Lucie was the choice to fill the need when the telephone call came from Dr. Collet’s pharmacy clerk, Jean Normand who was relaying the message from Dr. Chagnon.   When she arrived at the house at 10:50 a.m., it was locked so she sat on a bench watching for patients to arrive until noon, venturing once  to the front yard to look for a hammock.  After a great deal of questioning as to what Lucie might have seen of the Borden’s back yard and the positions of fences, outbuildings and doors, the following preliminary testimony reveals Lucy not to have been such an important witness as originally thought.  She had her back to the north end Chagnon driveway and was conversing with two patients who came up to her over the course of the first half hour, thus diverting her attention from anyone trying to sneak into the Borden’s back yard by way of the Chagnon back yard north end.  She does have a good view of the grove of trees and Crowe’s yard on the south end of the house and states this was the part of the Chagnon yard of which she viewed.

    Q. You were sitting with your face turned towards the other yard, to the south, were you not?

    A. Yes, I was.

    Q. So if anybody came over that fence at the back yard there, and down the carriage drive, you would not have seen them, would you, unless they had made a noise?

    A. I would not have seen them, but I would have heard the noise.

    Q. How do you know you would?

    A. I might, and I might not.

    Q. You might, and you might not; is that so?

    A. Yes Sir.

    Q. Unless there was some noise, made, you would not have seen them, would you, unless it caused you to look around? You would not have seen them unless you had looked around?

    A. No Sir.

    The Defense was not about to give up on the point that someone could have slipped by Lucie.

    Q. Now Miss Collet, you would not want to say that a man could not have come down that driveway and gone off, without your knowing it; while you were sitting there?

    A. No, I would not say it, but I did not see anybody.

    Q. You would not be apt to with your back to him, would you unless he made a noise?

    A. No Sir.

    Lucie Collet would later marry the pharmacy clerk, Jean Napoleon Normand (himself a widower).  Normand became a respected doctor for over 30 years in Fall River.  Lucie was his second wife, and after she died childless in June of 1900, Normand would remarry. (passport application below with photo of Dr. Normand)

    Jean Napoleon Normand

    Birth: 24 MAY 1871 in St.Pascal, Quebec, Canada

    Death: 4 MAY 1950 in Fall River, Bristol County, Massachusetts

    Father: Charles Francois Clovis Normand b: 18 DEC 1835 in St.Pascal, Quebec, Canada(Woodbridge)
    Mother: Celina D. Dionne b: 8 OCT 1844 in St.Pascal, Quebec, Canada

    Marriage 1 Celina Fafard b: 1881 in Canada

    Marriage 2 Lucie Collet b: 29 JAN 1874 in Canada

    Marriage 3 Emilie D. Lussier b: 24 MAR 1862 in Canada

    Lucie is buried with the other two wives in Notre Dame Cemetery in Fall River, off Stafford Road.  The large granite cross is very near the grave of Andrew Borden’s barber, Pierre LeDuc.

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  • Sylvia Bassett Knowlton

    June 7, 2011 /

    Sylvia Bassett Knowlton 1852-1937

    Portrait painted in 1930 (courtesy Sippican Historical Society)

    The portrayal of Mrs. Hosea Knowlton in the 1975 film version of the Borden case starring Elizabeth Montgomery was far from the mark of the actual Mrs. Sophia Knowlton.  Bonnie Bartlett, who played Sylvia Knowlton in the film bemoans the heaviness of a “woman’s skirts” in a man’s world of 1892 and plays a domestic and submisive woman in the mindset of the period.

    Bonnie Bartlett

    The real Mrs. Knowlton, born in 1852 in New Bedford, became a teacher after graduating from Bridgewater Normal School. She taught in Westport, Massachusetts (a short distance from Fall River) before her marriage in 1873 to Knowlton.  Knowlton’s New Bedford law practice broadened her circle of acquaintances to that city where she became an energetic organizer in public endeavors and president of the New Bedford Women’s Club where she once introduced Winston Churchill as a guest speaker.  At the time of the trial, she and Hosea had a summer rental in Marion at 294 Front Street.  In 1900, the couple built a summer house at283 Front Street, where he died in December of 1902; known as Knowlton House, the building now serves as a dormitory for Tabor Academy. Daggett House (275 Front Street), also a Tabor dorm, was built in 1913 as a permanent residence for the then-widowed Mrs. Knowlton.

    She is buried in New Bedford.  Hosea Knowlton’s remains were cremated in Boston and scattered over the fishing harbor in Marion.

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  • Another unsolved axe murder of five

    May 23, 2011 /

     

    August must be a bad month for homicide.  Curiously enough, on August 3, 1877 the bodies of Mr. Lewis Spencer and his four children were found hacked to bits in the family home and barn.  The Clark County, Missouri killings apparently occured on August 2nd and the bodies found by a family relative on the 3rd.  Mr. Spencer was a deacon at the Bethlehem Baptist Church near Luray, Missouri, and was a tax collector.  He often kept a large amount of cash in the home which was found to be missing at the time of the murders.   It may have had something to do with the murders.  The Spencer family had suffered the loss of Mrs. Spencer and two other young children prior to the murders.  All are buried together in the family plot. 

    Two men were put on trial for the deed but were acquitted while another suspect from Keokuk was set upon by an angry mob and hanged for the killings even though there was no proof he did it.  One suspect was the brother of Mrs. Spencer. The murder weapon was found at the back of the house covered in blood and there was the appearance that more than one killer might be involved.   Each victim was hit one to three times in the head, a fact which contrasts widely to the 19 blows to Abby Borden and the 10-11 to Andrew Borden in the Lizzie Borden case.

    http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50616F63D5A127B93C7A91783D85F438784F9  Link to New York Times Article

    and an excellent detailed account of trials and crime scene here http://boards.ancestry.com/localities.northam.usa.states.missouri.counties.clark/793.1.1.1/mb.ashx

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  • A Happy Mother’s Day

    May 8, 2011 /

      For all mothers, mothers-in-law, and stepmothers

    Sonnets are full of love
    gif
    Christina Rossetti (1881)
    clr gif

    Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome
    Has many sonnets: so here now shall be
    One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me
    To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,
    To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
    I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;
    Whose service is my special dignity,
    And she my loadstar while I go and come
    And so because you love me, and because
    I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath
    Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honored name:
    In you not fourscore years can dim the flame
    Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws
    Of time and change and mortal life and death.
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  • Lizzie’s Easter bonnet

    April 22, 2011 /

    Although Fall River may not have enjoyed the annual Easter Parade famous to Fifth Avenue, New York, Easter Sunday morning was a grand opportunity for ladies to promenade down the aisle in their new chapeau at church, and later in the many parks in the city.  Hats were de rigeur during Lizzie’s entire lifetime and she no more would have left the house without a hat on, than have left uncorseted.  Hats and gloves were the mark of a lady.  Lizzie even mentions that on August 4th, the day of the murders, when she returned from the barn loft looking for lead to make sinkers, she put her hat down in the diningroom before discovering her father on the sofa.

    Lizzie could easily afford a personal milliner when she moved to Maplecroft.  Mr. Bump, accompanied by his little daughter, would visit Maplecroft with trims and hat forms when Lizzie needed something new and stylish. She may have subscribed to The Delineator to keep up with all the styles.  Fun to think of Lizzie smiling over French ribbon, Italian straw boaters, felt cloches, and boxes of silk flowers and feathers in the comfort of her beautifully-appointed home on the Hill and making her choices for the season’s head adornments.

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  • Titanic and Fall River

    April 15, 2011 /

     

    April 15, 1912 was a morning the world awoke to the seemingly impossible news that the new White Star liner, the latest word in ship-building technology, was on the bottom of the North Atlantic.  At Maplecroft, in the comfort of her breakfast nook off the kitchen, or perhaps in her blue, floral-papered dining room, Lizzie Borden must surely have read the news in her Providence Journal or Fall River Herald and was as shocked and disbelieving as the rest of the world.  The sinking would be the talk in every city, town and village for many months to come.

    With the great city of Boston so close to Fall River, some passengers aboard the ill-fated liner were Boston-bound after the ship was to have docked in New York city and some Fall Riverites knew or had connections to some of the lost and survivors.  Some passengers called Massachusetts home, some were coming to Massachusetts from the old country for a better life.

     The last first class survivor of the disaster, Marjorie Newell Robb, lived to  be 103 and passed away on Highland Avenue at the Adams House in Fall River.  She was a girl of nineteen on the ship and was returning home with her father and sister to their home in Lexington, Massachusetts. http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/the-titanic-sisters.html 

    Her son, Newell Robb, was curator of the Fall River Marine Museum for a time, and the family made their home in nearby Westport.  Mrs. Marjorie Robb had lived near the water at Westport Point until she was unable to live alone.  She was a frequent speaker at area schools, churches and civic groups.  She attended several conventions of Titanic societies and held audiences spellbound with her clear recollections of the disaster.

    Today the Fall River Marine Museum has an excellent display of Titanica, as well as the  28 foot model of the ship used in the Barbara Stanwyck film from the 1950’s, TITANIC. The museum is a part of the Battleship Cove complex and houses many fascinating artifacts of the Fall River Line and Andrea Doria.  http://www.marinemuseum.org/home.html

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  • Spinner Publications & Keeley Library

    April 14, 2011 /

    Although many of these publications are out of print, Amazon and Ebay frequently have Volume 3 and 4 of Spinner at a good price.  Volume 4 has many wonderful old photos of Fall River and New Bedford, and features articles and interviews which give invaluable details of the “good old days”.  Mrs. Florence Brigham, former curator of the Fall River Historical Society, gives a memorable interview about her memories growing up in the city. The history of ice cream parlors in New Bedford is another article full of information and charm.

    Spinner Publications http://www.spinnerpub.com/Home.html site posts on new publications, calendars, maps, etc. and maintains an unparalleled archives of vintage photos.

    Also not to be missed, for the serious student of Fall River history, is the Keeley Library Online collection of photographs and postcards, Fall River yearbooks and articles- many hours of free online material to enjoy if you cannot come to Fall River. http://www.sailsinc.org/durfee/fulltext.htm (articles)  http://sailsinc.org/Durfee/ (index page)  http://sailsinc.org/Durfee/fallriver.htm (vintage slides of the city)

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