The Historical Society

by Jeanne Medeiros

“Mom, there’s nothing to do! We’re so bored!!”

How we yearned for that ten-week summer vacation the whole long, boring school year! And how its beauty faded rapidly by say, early July. We were city kids with no access to a pool or a playground or a park or a day camp to fill the endless summer hours. There were a bunch of us on our street, Summerfield, and around the block on Bigelow, and we were all bored, bored, bored. Sometimes we organized a neighborhood game of Kick the Can or Freeze Tag or Hide and Seek or kickball. There were minor expeditions to the Highland 5 and 10 for penny candy and cheap toys like Chinese finger traps or cap guns. And there were other destinations, like the tiny neighborhood grocery store we all called “Tom Ward’s”, run by the always-grumpy Tom Ward who sold us popsicles, fudgsicles, and Hoodsie cups.

But there were lots of unfilled hours, lots and lots of them. Hence – “Mom, we’re bored!”

“Go to the Fall River Historical Society,” she ventured. Oh well, it was better than nothing, so off we went, a motley crew consisting of my brother Tommy, my cousin Debbie, a couple of the Saunders kids, my buddy Joyce Miranda, and me. We walked the mile or so from our neighborhood to the stately granite mansion on Rock Street in the Highlands, Fall River’s only posh neighborhood.

We rang the bell and were greeted by the sour expressions of the prim and proper Yankee ladies who ran the place, unhappy to see this gaggle of kids who surely would not appreciate the grandeur of Fall River’s history. For these ladies who considered themselves Fall River’s elites, this history was a fascinating microcosm of the industrial revolution, replete with technological innovations, demographic peculiarities, and steamships.

But to us kids, Fall River history meant one thing – Lizzie Borden. After all, it was our hometown murderess who really put us on the map, wasn’t it? Didn’t every kid in the United States jump rope to

“Lizzie Borden took an axe

and gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done,

she gave her father forty-one.”

She was our gory claim to fame. She was buried right in our neighborhood in Oak Grove Cemetery, a favorite place to ride our bikes. Do we really have to hear about the founding families of Fall River and the development of textile mills? Talk about dull!

But the mighty dowagers of the Historical Society were in control. We were dragged through each and every room of the mansion, forced to look at re-created parlors of rich people we had no interest in, hearing about their sumptuous clothing, the expensive musical instruments they owned, the elaborate table settings they imported from wherever, the elegant parties they attended.

Just when we were on the verge of tears, we reached the last room on the tour, the only one we’d come to see – the Lizzie Borden room!!

Just a little recap about our girl Lizzie. On August 4, 1892, her father Andrew and step-mother Abby were hacked to death with a hatchet. The only ones home at the time were Lizzie and the Irish maid, Bridget, and there were no signs of a forced entry. Given that Bridget was outside washing windows all morning, suspicion soon fell on Lizzie, the 32-year-old spinster who was known to dote on her father and detest her step-mother. Since Andrew Borden was one of the wealthiest men in Fall River, with an estimated net worth of about 10 million in today’s dollars, and since the crime was so grisly, Lizzie’s subsequent trial was the OJ Simpson case of its day. Despite quite convincing evidence of her guilt, Lizzie was ultimately acquitted by a jury of upper-crust men who just could not believe that this wealthy Sunday school teacher could have committed such a heinous act. Many others saw it differently, and the case remains one of the biggest “who-dun-its” in American crime lore.