Arrived Boston yesterday afternoon.  Friends Tom and Rita picked me up at Logan and we went directly to Chinatown for dim sum before heading to their lovely home  outside of Boston.

I brought Tom and Rita a copy of Rebello’s Lizzie Borden – Past & Present which they did not have.

Today we did the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum which I hadn’t been to in about 5 years; walked around the Harvard campus, then had an early and GREAT seafood dinner at Ye Old Oyster House, sitting in the JFK booth.

Tomorrow morning we  fly into Albany, get a rental and drive over to Hyde Park.  Tom has made reservations for lunch at Escofier at the Culinary Institute of America.  I understand it’s a huge campus with several restaurants in the main “Hall”.  Their other son lives just outside Hyde Park so they’ll get to visit him before going back to Boston Monday morning.  I plan to stay and do some research at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library for a couple days digging into some letters between Grace Hartley Howe and Louis McHenry Howe.  (Thank you Julie for the box numbers!) Then, I’ll drive east to Newport and Fall River.

So far it’s been exhausting and I’m just getting started with 12 more days to go.  I’m still on Central Arizona time because I haven’t caught up on my sleep.

Recycled post.

From my Lizzie Borden collection is this Tuft’s College graduating yearbook photograph of Hosea Morrill Knowlton, also showing his signature. Knowlton of course, was the District Attorney who prosecuted Lizzie Borden in her famous 1893 Trial in New Bedford, MA.

From time to time I’ll be posting “little known tidbits” about the people, places and things that factor in the Lizzie Borden case, so I’m creating this new category. I’ve not been able to find this photograph on the internet so perhaps its shown here for the first time.

Knowlton graduated from Tuft’s College in 1867. After he died of a stroke (December 18, 1902), Charles E. Fay, a Tuft’s College graduate of 1868, wrote a 6-page tribute to Hosea in the January, 1903 issue of The Tuftonian, the college newsletter. It is here that we get an insight into Hosea’s younger days and find that he was not without experience in college pranks. (By the way, it wasn’t until July 15, 1892, the Tufts Board of Trustees voted “that the College be opened to women in the undergraduate departments on the same terms and conditions as men.”)

(Right click to view larger type)

Hosea Knowlton had three sons and they all attended Tuft’s College.

Though it is often stated that Knowlton graduated from Harvard Law School, he did not. He attended there for a year but did not graduate. I was able to verify this last summer when I went on a business conference to Raytheon in Andover and spent all my spare time doing research on Knowlton at the Boston Public Library and State House.

Below are posting stats of probably the best chat forum on the subject of the Lizzie Borden case.

Like the Grasberg mine in West Papua, Indonesia, it’s Archives are the repository of its own gold and copper riches. 

Yes, I’m talking about Stefani Koorey’s forum – the same forum for which she has blocked me from joining and inevitably removes my party mask of contrived digital personas when I have been discovered after slipping in under the radar.

Now look at these stats:

The steady decline of posts began in April of 2007 when the 4 digit count was less than the same month of the prior year.  And since April of 2008, all but one month has been in 3 digits.   And we just had a wallapaloosa of a Lizzie Borden month this past October and yet only 370 posts.  Wassup?

I attribute the recent reductions due to the lack of postings from sister Kat Koorey who, when not asking to “cite your source” was meticulous in assuring accurate information on the multitude of threads.  Kat deserves credit as being the chief contributor (and top poster) to the quality of information.  Now that she’s MIA, the post count and quality has subsided.

Another contributing factor to the steady decline, IMHO, is attributable to the more recent absence of Shelley Dziedzic who also was a great contributor to the Forum’s content.  Her bright and breezy posts, not to mention the glorious photos, was a delight to all.  I’m sure she is missed by the 15 or so hard core regulars.  Shelley was the #2 top poster.

The point is, no matter what lack of, er, ah, cordiality exists between Stef and me, the Lizzie Borden forum is a terrific source of Bordenia, provided you have the determined patience of a Grasberg miner.

I would encourage all eager to learn more – novice or scholar – to check out those threads and archives.  You don’t have to join unless you want to actually post, but you certainly can take advantage of the riches of that mine without joining. The rewards are plentiful and the journey exciting.

Inside the Fall River theater – a movie based on historical fact is showing.   Suddenly, a man stands up and blocks the view:

“Hey, Mister!  Down in front! We’re tryna watch a movie here.”

“Thanks, Mister.”

Those who choose to believe Lizzie Borden was innocent cite the various theories to be found in dozens of books on the case. From the villainous “Intruder” to the illegitimate son, Billy Borden, there is none more preposterous than the “Emma did it” theory.

That Lizzie’s older sister, visiting in Fairhaven – a good 15 miles distant in horse and carriage days – committed the dastardly deed was never considered in the slightest by the Fall River police or District Attorney Hosea Knowlton. It was only many decades after the crimes and Lizzie’s acquittal that this theory took hold.  But how did it come about?  How did it start?  Was it Alfred Hitchcock’s teleplay, “The Older Sister“? Just when and from whom did this theory first appear in print or any other media?

I made a delightful discovery a couple years ago from my expanded readings of the Lizzie Borden-Franklin Roosevelt connection.  That connection has always intrigued me because had Lizzie lived six more years she might had taken tea with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, an invitation arranged by her cousin, Grace.  Imagine that.  Lizzie Borden in the White House.

I think it’s time to reveal the genesis of the “Emma did it” theory.  The source is none other than Lizzie’s own cousin’s husband, Chief political strategist and advisor, personal secretary to President Franklin D. Roosevelt – Louis McHenry Howe.

Louis McHenry Howe and President Franklin Roosevelt

Louis was, of course, married to Grace Hartley Howe. Grace was born November 9, 1874 in Fall River making her 14 years younger than Lizzie. Grace’s maternal grandfather, Cook Borden, and Lizzie’s paternal grandfather, Abraham Borden, were brothers. Grace married Louis on May 6, 1899 at age 24. Louis had been a newspaper man and he surely had read about the murders, the legal proceedings and Lizzie’s ultimate acquittal.  After his marriage to Grace, there must have been discussions with his wife about her notorious relative.

On December 11, 1931, writer Fulton Oursler went to meet Franklin Roosevelt, then Governor of New York,  at his home at 49 East 56th Street.  The meeting was a result of Oursler’s writing two recent articles for the influential Liberty Magazine, (of which he was about to become editor) one of which was entitled “Another Roosevelt in the White House?” It was a time when Governor Roosevelt was about to engage in the year long campaign for the presidency under the tireless guidance of his closest friend and chief political strategist, Louis Howe.

Upon Oursler’s  arrival he was greeted by Louis who was living in the Roosevelt home while his wife lived in Fall River.  The two men waited for FDR’s return from the dentist.  The conversation that took place – remarkable in and of itself -  can be read in the book shown below – an autobiography competed by his son, Fulton Oursler, Jr. :

Behold This Dreamer! Fulton Oursler, Little, Brown & Company, 1964, 1st Ed.

Click on images for larger view.

Now, to any serious reader of the life of Louis Howe, one would know how he often played gags on people, toying with their head so to speak.  I can imagine Louis saying all this with a straight face but with an undetected twinkle in his eye that the very straight-laced and conservative Oursler would not recognize.

Here was a man (Louis) whose wife was named as a primary legatee in Lizzie’s Will just 4 years previous (but due to the six years of probating had not yet received her cash windfall).  Perhaps Louis had Lizzie on his mind because of the fact the first Probate accounting had just been held less than two months previous on October 31, 1931 in a Fall River court.   Or perhaps he was just full of glee knowing his man, Governor Roosevelt, was on the threshold of becoming “President Roosevelt”  in a year’s time, mainly due to his own efforts.

Whatever his reasons for saying what he said, Louis was a man who surely knew at least the basic facts of the case.   But he told this story and it stuck.  Not only did he tell it to Oursler but he repeated it to that prolific writer and librarian, Edmund Pearson at a subsequent luncheon arranged by Oursler.   Now Pearson, being an expert on the case, didn’t believe a word of it.  How he must have cringed over that bit about Emma being crazy and suffered from epileptic fits, and had been out of town in “Marion” but snuck back.  Either Louis had scant knowledge of the particulars or Oursler got that wrong, but oh, how Louis much have enjoyed that luncheon!  And Louis most certainly knew beforehand that Pearson had written that long essay on the Borden case in Studies in Murder, published in 1924.   Oh yeah, Louis knew what he was doing, all right.  I would love to have been at that luncheon – invisible and silent but taking in every word of the Messrs. Oursler, Pearson and Howe.

There’s a lot more misinformation in those quoted remarks of Louis attributed by Fulton Oursler – almost comical in its ridiculous assertions – as any scholar of the case will readily recognize. Could Louis, always the visionary and strategist,  have deliberately wanted to eradicate any thought that the cousin of the wife of the chief advisor to the future President of the United States was a murderer, and by so doing,  misdirect guilt to the sister?

Oh, Louis, you dishevled, asthmatic, chain-smoking, strategizing scamp, you.  Look what you’ve done.  Your contrived tale told nearly 80 years ago continues to surface and provide an outlandish alternative theory.

So there you have it, the source and genesis of the “Emma did it” theory first appearing in print.

Note:   It was Rosella and Hartley Howe who inherited most of Lizzie’s furniture, books, etc. that Grace Hartley Howe had inherited from Lizzie’s Will. When Hartley died and Rosella went to a nursing home, her son Edward H. Howe, was given many of those items.

She was the wife of Hartley Howe, son of Louis McHenry Howe and Grace Hartley Howe.  Grace was second cousin to Lizzie Borden. Rosella R. (Senders) Howe

September 10, 2009

WESTPORT, MASS. — Rosella Senders Howe, poet, feminist, political adviser, and Lewis Carroll scholar, died at home on Thursday, September 10, after a long illness. She was 97.

Mrs. Howe was born March 28, 1912, in Exeter, N.H., and grew up in Cambridge, Mass., where she graduated from Cambridge Latin School and attended Radcliffe College for two years, majoring in psychology. In her first job after college, she put her new-found knowledge of the human psyche and her excellent command of the English language to immediate use, responding to irate letters for Macy’s complaint department.

She went on to study dance in New York’s Greenwich Village with Charles Weidman, a pioneer of modern dance, but said she gave it up after a tour stop in Providence when she found herself sharing a dressing room with a circus elephant. Despite this traumatic encounter with a pachyderm, she remained in excellent physical condition for the rest of her life.

Before World War II, she worked for the American Red Cross in Boston. During this time, she met Hartley Howe, a newspaperman who was the son of Louis McHenry Howe, President Franklin Roosevelt’s best friend and political advisor. They were married in 1941 and moved to Washington D.C. , where she worked for the Office of Indian Affairs and then for Sidney Hillman, head of the labor division of the War Production Board, writing speeches and news releases.

After their first son was born and Mr. Howe returned from the war 10 months later, the Howes moved to Queens, New York. Here Mrs. Howe concentrated on their growing family of three boys and a girl while she and Mr. Howe were active in the Democratic Party, the Americans for Democratic Action, and the American Civil Liberties Union. She later taught English as a Second Language at Queens College and befriended many of her foreign students, who adored her.

Once their children were grown, the Howes moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where Mr. Howe was a journalism professor and Mrs. Howe finished up her degree in linguistics and studied Japanese. She became active in the Wisconsin Humanities Council, where she taught poetry and writing to adult students. She was a prolific poet herself, excelling in clever puns, visual metaphors, and acid social criticism.

She was known to drive a thousand miles to sample the country’s best oysters, played a wicked game of tennis, and provided strategic advice to the campaigns of politicians such as (Congressman) Barney Frank and (former Fall River mayor) Ed Lambert, among others. With a fascination for language and a vibrant imagination, she was drawn to the works of Lewis Carroll and traveled to many meetings of the Lewis Carroll Society. Over the years, she also mentored many young adults, especially women, always urging them to follow their career dreams.

Mrs. Howe is survived by three sons, David S. Howe, of New York City, Edward H. Howe of Jamaica Plain, Mass., and Henry S. Howe of Gallup, N.M.; one daughter, Rosemary Howe Camozzi of Florence, Ore.; by two sisters, Virginia Browne of Wayland, Mass., and Henrietta Jacobsen of Austin, Texas, and a brother, John Senders of Toronto, Canada; and by 12 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Her husband Hartley died in 1996.

A memorial celebration for friends and family will be held October 24, at 3 p.m., at the Westport Friends Meeting, 930 Main Road, Westport, Mass.

In lieu of flowers, contributions in Mrs. Howe’s honor may be made to Emily’s List, 1120 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20036.

The explosion of interest in the paranormal in today’s society has resulted in several “ghost hunting” investigative t.v. shows, cottage industry “entertainment mediums” who proliferate the ‘net with their blogs and websites, bona fide mediums and psychics whose best-sellers help launch their own talk shows, increase manufacture and sales of evp recording devices, increase demand for Ghost Hunter University applicants, and hundreds of bookings at the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast. Why is this? Why now at this time, post 9-11 in this new millenium? What is it in our culture, our society, that draws people from all professions, and all religious and educational backgrounds? I don’t know, but I do know that it’s a phenomena which continues to grow as well as those who would capitalize from it. It’s the American way.

The Lizzie Borden house from the north looking south from the space the Churchill house used to occupy. The “side door” is on the lower left.

People like to visit and occupy the same space in a different time where notable historical or notorious solved or unsolved crimes took place. Thus, the Borden house is a magnet to those seeking that experience. They come in droves for the day time tours to hear the tale and see the spots and take pictures and relish in the “I was there” experience.

Lizzie Borden, as I’ve often said, is a one dimensional persona, encapsulated in a inaccurate quatrain forever doomed to be perpetually marketed as wielding a bloody axe upon the noggins of her stepmother and father one sticky-sweaty day in early August 1892. But she is so much more than that and the story of Lizzie Andrew Borden and Fall River are so much more than that. 92 Second Street draws scholars to the case – flocking as if to Mecca to soak up the richness of the environment, impervious to the tales of the premises being haunted. They register disdain about ghostly apparitions and things that go bump in the night. “Bah! Humbug!” they say and they say it with every confidence that they shall enjoy another quiet, undisturbed slumber through the night. And they do. Repeatedly. Every visit. No paranormal activity whatsoever. For years.

So then, if we look for it will it be there? Or is it there to be felt, seen and heard by some but not by others? Well, I can tell you my experiences as one who was first inside 92 Second Street in 1977 and spoke with then owner, John McGinn, nothing was said about any paranormal activity. And I’ve stayed overnight at the B&B since 1998, often having the entire house all to myself – no one – no one but me inside. In all those years, in all those stays, I’ve only had 3 experiences, and one doesn’t really count. I’ll tell you briefly about them:

#1. November 3, 1999 – Martha McGinn gave me a key to come and go as I was the only guest and would be the only one inside the house that night. I went down to the cellar with a few clothes to wash and suddenly I saw it! Holy Pshaw!! ANDREW BORDEN LAID OUT IN HIS COFFIN AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS!!! My heart leaped. For a nano second. It was only Martha’s prop from her Halloween party a few nights previous. But damn, did that look real.

#2. August 4, 2006. The B&B was filled with paranormal investigators, psychics, mediums, ghost-writing authors, etc., all talking about this new entity in the house. I listened with the ear and mind of a skeptic. “If you want it, it will come.” Exhausted from the day and night’s activities, I went to lay on a cot down in the cellar, away from it all. Everyone was upstairs. I was alone. I lay on my side and in a few moments felt 3 fingers slide down my back. Distinctively 3 fingers. Medium Liz Nowicki – Boston Herald photo

Not a spider, not cobwebs, but fingers. I leaped up and yelled: “Who’s there?”. For the first time EVER, I was scared and I bolted upstairs and outside to smoke a cigarette with a shaking hand. Relating what I had just experienced, I was told that it was a new, hostile entity that came thru a portal from all the seances conducted in the house. Oh fine, thought I….after all these years now I gotta think twice about this house being active. Me. Senior Skeptic #1. (For more about this experience click this link to the podcast.  It was like I was paranormically divirginized. I could never view or feel the same about 92 Second Street again. I was deflowered. And I didn’t like  it.

#3. September 29, 2007. Ghost Hunter’s University booked the whole house. In addition, a number of psychics and mediums were in attendance. Donald Woods and I sat in on a seance conducted by local medium “Liz”. Liz is a very sweet and attractive lady who can “read” people and sense “things”. She regularly conducts seances for guests who want them at the B&B. Never having sat in on any seance and quite frankly believed them to be faked, I thought I would check this out.  Read about her HERE.

About 16-20 people in the room – 6 seated at a round table. Liz’s back was to the sealed up fireplace. My back was towards the parlor door. I had a clear unobstructed view of all at the table. Without detailing all the questions asked by Liz and the other guests, I’ll just state what happened. The table moved. The table not only moved, it lifted from the carpet, it turned several times 360 degrees, it tilted about 80 degrees, it rocked and rolled. Trickery? Knee-cap momentum? Finger grips? Wires? Well, I’ll tell you this. I bent down several times and looked underneath the table. I walked right up *to* the table and crouched down and observed everyone’s legs, feet, knees, arms and hands. I did this several times. I moved in closer and eye-balled all hands and fingers watching for pressure, grips, slides, whatever. That table moved even when everybody’s hands were completely off the table and their feet were flat on the floor and no body parts came in contact with the table! Conclusion: THE LIZZIE BORDEN HOUSE IS ACTIVE. Does that mean it’s haunted? Well, for some, things do go Boo! and Bump in the night, but no one’s ever been hurt or morphed into some axe-wielding creature creating bloody bedlam.

Lee-ann Wilber, co-owner, swears there are children in the Knowlton Room on the third floor. She kindly leaves them toys in the trunk. But I highly doubt they are the legendary drowned children of Andrew’s uncle, Ladowick Borden and his deranged wife because those kids were one and two years old and would not have the dexterity to play with the marbles so often heard. But there’s something. There’s definitely something. And prior to two months ago I would have still been saying “Bah! Humbug!”

So as we approach another Halloween – an almost sacred night for those entrenched in the occult, and for those psychics, mediums, and ghost-chasers whose antennae are at peak performance every October 31st, let all who read here that I, Faye Musselman, being of sound and skeptic mind, do hereby testify that 92 Second Street is “active” with unknown spirits and paranormal activity.

But is it haunted per se? That doorway to my mind is yet to be opened.

Gallery X in New Bedford, MA is currently showing a wide range of art focused on Lizzie Borden.  The August 4, 1892 Fall River crimes were tried in New Bedford’s Superior Court in 1893 – thus, the  “..Tale of Two Cities.”

Judging from this YouTube entry by Ric Rebello, the art is spectacular.  If you live in the area, go see it!

Visit their website.

Congratulations to Susan Hauck, curator of the event.  Fantastic job, Susan!!

Lizzie Borden

Colorado artist Lori Kanary has a wide range of charcoal paintings  for sale that mimic actual known 19th century photographs of the notorious.  These can be viewed at her website HERE. You can also purchase framed prints.   Nice Christmas gift, eh?

Lori’s other work can be seen HERE.