EMMA BORDEN AT WHEATON FEMALE SEMINARY
July 29, 2007
The following tale may not have the same significance as Dr. Robert Ballard’s 1985 discovery of the Titanic, but it falls into the same category of “Who gets the claim to fame”, and the discovery of exactly when and where Emma Borden went away to school belongs to Kristin M. Pepe, Laboratory Director in the Psychology & Education Department of Mount Holyoke College in Hadley, MA. I think Borden enthusiasts, scholars, collectors, and just the curious would appreciate knowing about it – and not having to pay for the privledge – and so I post it here, knowing that those crawling bots or whatever they are will navigate their way and become embedded in any number of Google word searches and linkages.Here’s the background:
At the Coroner’s Inquest held August 9-11, 1892, at the Fall River Second District Court (housed in the same structure as the Central Police Station), Emma Lenora Borden, age 41, testified as follows:
EMMA L. BORDEN
Q. (Mr. Knowlton) What is your full name?
A. Emma L. Borden.
Q. What does the L. stand for?
A. Lenora.
Q. You are older than Miss Lizzie.
A. Yes Sir.
Q. What is your age?
A. Forty- one.
Q. How old were you, as near as you can recollect, when your
father married the second time?
A. Just a trifle over fourteen.
Q. So you probably remember your Mother?
A. Yes Sir.
Q. Have you lived at home most of the time?
A. Yes Sir.
Q. have you ever lived away from home?
A. I was away at school about a year and a half.
Q. That was sometime ago?
A. Yes Sir.
No where else in the source documents, newspaper reports, books, magazine articles, journals, pamphlets, websites, blogsites, Hallmark cards, bumper stickers, YouTube videos or wall graffitti has it been revealed just exactly WHERE she was “away at school”. Oh, for that follow-up question from Hosea Knowlton, District Attorney. Alas, he never asked it and consequently, it has been speculated upon for years as to just where she attended.
First, Kristin followed up on the speculation that Emma may have attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, and since she worked there (only now called Mount Holyoke College), she checked with their archives. A 100 year biographical directory covering 1837 thru 1937 held no entry for an Emma L. Borden. Other seminaries were considered: Ipswich, Byfield Seminary, Buckland Female School, Northfield Seminary, Smith’s College, and even Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Conn. Then it occurred to Kristin that Andrew may have gone the cheaper – and closer – route of sending Emma to Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Mass., about 35 miles south of Boston. Her diligence to inquiries yielded what is now the provenance of this new discovery.
Wheaton College’s (no longer named a seminary) Alumnae Register for January 1927, showed an address for our Emma in Fall River. Bingo. Further, documentation in the Registers confirms that Emma attended during the years 1866 to 1868. In the Alumnae Register for 1932, Emma is listed as a non-degreed alumnae with an “x” signifying she was deceased at least by 1932. (Emma died 9 days after Lizzie on June 10, 1927).
Emma attended about 35 years after “Wheaton Female Seminary” initially opened. Emma would have returned to the Ferry Street homestead for the Holidays. For Abby Borden, it must have been the least stressful and perhaps happiest time that she had with little Lizzie who would have been 6, 7 and 8 years old when Emma attended. With Emma away, there would be no psychological tug-of-war with Emma’s “She’s mine!” hostile possessiveness, which Abby must have sadly endured during that first year of marriage to Andrew. Yes, a year and a half reprieve for Abby. And it must have irked the hell out of Emma to have to “abandon” her “baby” sister like that and be sent off “to school”. Emma may have spent a lot of time thinking about the relationship between that “steppie” Mrs. Borden and her poor little Lizzie. She may have experienced some angst in wondering if Lizzie was growing fonder and more loving towards Abby in her absence, clouding her focus for her academic development. In any case, it was in 1868 that “Abbie” gave Lizzie a lovely engraved silver cup (see Leonard Rebello’s Lizzie Borden Past and Present, Alzack Press, pub. 1999, pg. 12.) That gift speaks to us of Abby wanting to be a loving mother to this younger daughter of her husband.
A young Abby Borden, circa 1862-1865
The alumna association was formed in 1870, but it’s doubtful Emma was an active alumnae. She certainly didn’t leave them anything in her Will.
About Wheaton:
Wheaton College
26 East Main Street
Norton, Massachusetts 02766-2322
(508) 286-8200
Click for Wheaton’s website here.
The campus, of course, is nothing like it was back in 1866, and only a couple of the original structures remain.
The staff at the campus Wallace Library there will accommodate any inquiries for those who would like to follow up.
And so there it is. We now know where and when Emma “went away to school”.
A BIG SHOUT OUT AND THANK YOU TO KRISTIN M. PEPE!!!
Ever get the feeling………..
July 27, 2007
Switching blogs
July 27, 2007
I’ll be importing from my LiveJournal blog. Stay tuned! 
Meanwhile enjoy the picture show…. August 4th is approaching.
SECRETS WITHHELD – SECRETS EXPOSED
July 27, 2007
I’ve been in a quandry as to which of the topics listed below I should address for my next journal entry.
Helpful suggestions gladly accepted.
1. Transcript of AJB and JVM’s conversation that Wednesday afternoon.
2. Where the hatchet was hid the first hour.
3. Where the hatchet was hid the second hour.
4. Who abscounded with the hatchet in the third hour.
5. Why Emma partied hardy at Wheaton Female Seminary.
6. Sneak Preview of Harry Potter and the Harrowing Hatchet Deaths.
7. The real reason Andrew wore a truss.
8. Publication of the play Lizzie wrote for Nance O’Neil.
9. Cabinet photo of Lizzie at Trevi Fountain, Rome, Italy 1890.
10. Cabinet photo of Lizzie and Anna Borden kissing the Rosetta Stone 1890.
11. “Driven to Madness” a spec script by Ernest Terry.
12. Personal journal of Augusta Tripp breaks the mystery why the Bordens were considered “ugly”.
13. Barnyard animals and what they really meant to John Morse.
14. The secret tryst between John Coughlin and Rufus Hilliard.
15. Victoria Lincoln’s first, and loveless, marriage.
16. Preston Gardiner and the return of “Love’s Awakening”.
17. Letter from Helen Leighton imploring Lizzie to fork over additonal funds for Animal Rescue League start-up costs.
18. Hetty Green’s letter advising Andrew not to sell certain real estate.
19. Andrew Borden’s letter to Hetty Green reminding her of .82 cents still due on his farm eggs.
20. Eleven reasons why 92 Second Street was not conducive to high teas and parlor games.
21. “My Life at Maplecroft During the Wilson and Harding Years” as penned by Miss Lizbeth.
22. “Squirrels, Shoulders & Sunshine”, chapter from A Balanced Life, memoir of Lizbeth Borden.
23. “I’m Going to Disneyland!” – Newly discovered NY Times Interview upon Lizzie’s acquittal.
24. “Lizzie Borden -Table for One” – a play in two acts by Chef George, Abbey Grille.
25. “I Blog. Therefore, I Am”. Synergistic psycho-babblings and why we do it.
26. “I-Phone. YouTube. Me inanimate long time.” – A SNL skit yet to be aired.
27 . My Travels Down Under by Nance O’Neil – (An Australian travel-log not stocked by the Fall River Historical Society for obvious reasons of decorum.)
28.. Knock, Knock Jokes for those buried at Oak Grove Cemetery.
29. “Ladowick, Schladowick – She Wasn’t Even Blood” – short essay by unknown paranormal investigator.
ANOTHER TATTERED TALE ON THE FABRIC OF FALL RIVER
July 27, 2007
Jul. 7th, 2007
Deja vu. And yet another mill closes in Fall River. Since 1945 Quaker Fabric has been in business in Fall River, and more than one generation has worked in its many plants. But today it announced its closing in the Fall River Herald News. http://www.heraldnews.com/homepage/x268217792
It’s so sad to me that the once vibrant city of Fall River, which had its true glorious decade in the 1870’s but still kept a pulsebeat by the many looms and other machinery clickety clacking, clickety clacking every day. As the spindles diminished so did the sound, until only a faint echo of what was once the lifeblood of Fall River could be heard.
I feel for those workers. I feel for the town. Fall River has never really fully recovered from the 1928 fire and subsequent Great Depression. It’s vitality and importance to the nation in its production of cloth are memories and entries in history books. What remains is the spirit of the working class of Fall River…they remained when the “Hill notables” sold and moved out. They stayed on, generation after generation. The lifeblood of Fall River. They had community through their neighborhoods and their churches and their mom and pop businesses. Some prospered and bought those homes on “the Hill” but many more of the poor continued their blue collar work. There were still some mills left where factory work could still be found and a living could be made. And there also remained the empty five story brick and granite structures reminding all of what once was. But Quaker Fabric provided work and the true “fabric of Fall River”, like their parents and grandparents and great grandparents before them, continued to work.
And now another closes. Sad. So terribly sad in so many ways. Gone are the glory days of Quaker Fabric in Fall River. Deja vu.
From it’s website: http://www.quakerfabric.com/aboutus.htm
LUTHER’S MUSEUM HAS LIZZIE BORDEN CHAIRS
July 27, 2007
Jul. 2nd, 2007
Luther’s Museum is home to the Swansea Historical Society. For over 100 years known as “Luther’s Four Corners”, it is where Uncle John Morse had his evening meal on Wednesday, August 3, 1892. Uncle Morse had retrieved some farm-fresh eggs at Andrew’s Swansea farm on Gardner’s Neck Road, not far away. And it makes a body wonder why left over mutton was served when fresh eggs were on hand that fateful Thursday morning.
If you ask about them, the operators of the Museum will let you see and photograph some chairs purported to have come from the farm house and owned by Lizzie. They have accommodated many people who’ve heard about the chairs and delight in having their picture taken with “something that belonged to Lizzie.”
Above images from (click here)
The images below are my own.
The “Luther Museum” structure has an engraving outside which explains the history and importance of the Luther family to Swansea.
UNCANNY RESEMBLANCES – PART I
July 27, 2007
They say everyone has a double and there’s plenty to go around in the Lizzie Borden case. Facial resemblances here are based on the shape of the head, nose, eyes, mouth, bone structure, placement of ears and distance from eyes to chin, types of ear lobes, arching of eyebrows, and on and on. Sometimes the similarities are just what we want to see and to others, no resemblance at all. I find the following uncanny. I’ll be posting more of these at a later date. They’ve surfaced before but not all together.
Left: from an old eBay offering purported to be Andrew Borden, as seen on the right.
Mayor John W. Coughlin Garrett Dillahunt as Frances Woolcott
in HBO’s Deadwood
Abby Durfee Gray Borden Actress Kathy Bates Sarah Anthony Morse Borden
Top, background actress in Sopranos series holding photo of Florence Brigham, past curator emeritus of the Fall River Historical Society.
“MR. ROBINSON! TEAR DOWN THAT FILE CABINET!”
July 27, 2007
Jun. 29th, 2007
George Dexter Robinson Blue Flo Plate of Gov. Robinson
3X Governor of Mass. private collection of Faye Musselman
Headed Lizzie’s defense team On loan to Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast
from South Coast Today April 14, 1998
“By Paul Edward Parker, Providence Journal-Bulletin
FALL RIVER — In a locked storage room on the 16th floor of a high-rise office building in Springfield, a five-drawer file cabinet may hold the secrets of Fall River’s most enduring mystery: Who killed Andrew and Abby Borden. Only one man has the key to that locked filing cabinet, an administrator in the law firm that, more than a century ago, represented Lizzie Borden when she was acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother. Since June 1893, the papers inside that filing cabinet have remained a secret between Lizzie and her lawyer, former Gov. George D. Robinson. But all that may soon change.
The U.S. Supreme Court is considering a case involving former White House aide Vincent W. Foster, who committed suicide in 1993. Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr has demanded to see notes of a conversation between Foster and his lawyer just days before the suicide. The high court will hear oral arguments in that case on June 8, with a decision expected in late June or early July. The court will decide whether attorney-client privilege, which protects the secrecy of the relationship between lawyers and their clients, continues after the client dies. It is the attorney-client privilege that has kept the Robinson papers out of the public eye for 105 years. Though Lizzie is long gone, her lawyer lives on, in the form of Robinson, Donovan, Madden & Barry, the law firm that succeeded Governor Robinson’s firm.
The Supreme Court’s pending ruling opens a tantalizing possibility to historians and Borden buffs. “Would we like to look at Robinson’s papers? Absolutely, of course,” said George E. Quigley, president of The International Lizzie Borden Association.
Said Michael Martins, curator of the Fall River Historical Society: “Any documents that pertain to a case as notorious as the Borden case, a great unsolved murder mystery, would be of tremendous interest to researchers and scholars.” The historical society is home to the largest collection of Borden material, including the papers of prosecutor Hosea M. Knowlton and City Marshal Rufus B. Hilliard, Fall River’s police chief at the time of the murders. “I’m sure it’s an interesting collection,” Martins said of the Robinson papers, “but I doubt there’s anything that’s going to prove the case.”
The types of documents in the collection are as mysterious as what they might say.
Bruce Lyon, administrator at the Robinson firm, said the collection includes newspaper clippings and other materials that were publicly available. It also includes a lot more material, he said, all of which is privileged.
Around the time of the 100th anniversary of the murders, in 1992, the firm consulted with the Board of Bar Overseers, the agency that oversees the conduct of lawyers. The board informally advised that not only does the attorney-client privilege bar the firm from releasing the papers, it prevents the firm from disclosing the nature of what it holds. Lyon said the Robinson papers have been catalogued and placed in protective document holders, but he could not say anything more.
Speculation is that the files might contain letters between Lizzie and Robinson; letters between Robinson and other lawyers involved in the case; Robinson’s notes, both strategic preparations and documenting how the trial progressed; and other documents relating to testimony at the trial and preliminary proceedings.
Few expect to find anything directly incriminating Lizzie, such as a signed confession. But the papers may hold bits of information that may have seemed inconsequential at the time that, viewed with a modern understanding of the case, might bolster one or more theories of the crime.
“Some things in there might be historical,” Quigley said. “There might be statements in there that might be damning or might be helpful to her. There would be notes that Robinson wrote about the case that would be telling. Who knows.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling will probably only deal with whether lawyers can be ordered to divulge material relating to dead clients. A ruling paving the way for release of the papers would only be the first step to their becoming public. If the Robinson papers became publicly available and the law firm wanted to lend or donate them to the historical society, Martins would be happy to accept them, but added, “we wouldn’t go after them.”
Martins said the society, in such a case, would probably seek to publish the papers, a painstaking process involving years of transcribing handwritten notes. The society published prosecutor Knowlton’s papers in 1994, and has been preparing the roughly 600 documents in Hilliard’s papers, which are still several years from publication. Despite the keen historical interest in the material, even Martins and Quigley are hesitant to advocate that the Supreme Court extinguish the attorney-client privilege upon a client’s death.
Quigley noted that Foster has living relatives, who could be hurt by the release of confidential material. “Lizzie, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “She’s dead. She’s dead a long time.”
Martins thinks the privilege should be extended even to the long-dead accused ax murderess. “Personally, I think Lizzie Borden bought and paid for her defense,” he said. “Isn’t it important that they protect the documents of their former clients? I think it’s important that they do that.”
***********************
The Supreme Court, using the case of Vincent Foster, ruled that lawyers must still maintain the attorney-client privilege, even when the client is dead. Personally, I can see the merits of this with regards to private correspondence. But the firm most likely has what remains the only surviving copy of Bridget Sullivan’s Inquest Testimony. Testimony from all others called by District Attorney Knowlton has long since been made public via the “Jennings hip bath collection” sold by the Fall River Historical Society. The Inquest was a legal proceeding and if this firm does have Bridget’s testimony, it surely is not “material between lawyers and their client” and, IMHO, should be released and made public.
About 5 years ago I sent an email to attorney Jeffrey McCormick (no longer with the firm) following up on Jules Ryckebusch’s earlier plea in 1992 to release the files. I received a prompt and courteous email response citing their standard reply as indicated above.
The firm has evolved and grown, now known as Robinson Donovan P.C. Check out their website: http://www.robinson-donovan.com/index.epl
A HUMOROUS TELLING OF THE TALE
July 27, 2007
Jun. 28th, 2007
From Charles F. Cooper comes this fairly accurate telling of the tale, peppered with wit that plays upon the myths, misinformation and generally obsessiveness of the Lizzie Borden case. Using illustrations that are both insightful and funny, this 15 minute read is well worth the time.
Here’s an excerpt:
As Lizzie walked in, Abby turned toward her stepdaughter and immediately got the first whack of the day. It was upside the head and if it didn’t knock her out (or worse), it at least knocked her down. From the posture of the body, we can guess she may still have been conscious and instinctively turned face down for protection. If so, that was fine with Lizzie, who standing astride her stepmother, began to flail away at the back of her head. Eighteen more chops and she figured the job well done. She was correct.
There are, though, problems with this scenario although it remains the most probable one. Certainly, the required technical finesse raises some questions. Although there were nearly a hundred splats of blood in the room – on the wall, on the dresser, and on the bed – Lizzie was clean. The question, then and now, was whether she could have had time to hose down both herself and the hatchet so thoroughly that the best forensic tests of the day couldn’t detect any blood.
For the entire article, here’s the link:
http://members.aol.com/ChipCooper/lizzieborden.html
