Living in the Shadow of Lizzie Borden

I spent seven of the most impressionable years of life living at 43 Lawrence Street in Swansea Massachusetts. It was the quintessential blue collar America setting. Small quaint Cape Cod style houses on a cluster of connected streets along the river that had made the Gardner, Luther, Brown, and Case families decide to settle there in the first place. The town was filled with history from the huge Victorian homes of the ship builders to the town hall built from the stones that had marked the boundaries of the land King Phillip's war was fought over. Historical cemeteries were maintained and every school kid took a field trip to Abram's rock where an Indian warrior would not betray his people and was told to jump three times and if he survived he would be allowed to live. Though severely injured, he climbed to the top of the monolith for the third time and jumped to his death. Along the way we learned about burls in the trees and berries that the Indians would use for making fabric die or food and the crowning glory of the trip was a lone lady slipper that bloomed along the trail, an endangered species right here in our little town.

With all that history going on one has to wonder why we didn't get to go on a fieldtrip to the home of the most infamous axe murderess of all time, Lizzie Borden. I don't mean the home on Second Street in Fall River where the murder occurred. I don't mean the mansion she bought after being acquitted located in the then fashionable highlands and named Maplecroft. I mean her summer home, the long white house at the top of my street.

Prominently seated at the top of Lawrence Street was a long, low white house with two front doors and a small side porch. A rough arcing and rutted dirt driveway with an ancient hitching post at one corner curved the short distance from the road to the house. The windows were always covered with white lace curtains. The barn behind the house was not particularly notable but the way it looked to me as a child with treetops and sky above it and a field of tall wild grass beside it was ominous. Maybe it was the lack of landscaping that made it feel unloved and therefore unwelcoming. It may have been the starkness of the plain white house whose only ornaments were shutters. Whatever it was this was not a typical looking house. The other Cape Cods were more modern, taller with landscaping and walkways and proper driveways. Even the houses from the same Victorian time period as this were what you would call painted ladies even though they were not extravagantly painted. In fact most of the tremendously beautiful homes with soaring roof lines, wrap around porches, and witches hats in the area were painted in a drab New England color scheme of brown, green, burgundy, and dark gray.

Do you remember the first time you were conscious of who Lizzie Borden was? How about exactly what the story was? Do you know now what the whole story is? Does anyone? I know I don't remember what I knew or when but as early as elementary school you didn't say Lizzie Borden out loud. You knew that was her house and there was some thought that part of her might be lurking their waiting for a wandering child to happen by. It was to the point where we didn't walk on that side of the street. I didn't know, not really, who she was, and some how, some where, I had heard she killed her parents but we didn't even sing that song about the forty whacks. Maybe I was better off then being afraid of things I didn't know and couldn't even begin to imagine. The mere thought of someone killing their parents was haunting enough. I didn't need the details.

At that time in the 70's an attorney owned the house. Mr. Hudner was a friend of my parents. My father fixed his car and he acted as their attorney when necessary. I think the car thing happened much more often than the attorney thing. I don't remember his wife but I remember him and I remember being afraid of him. He lived alone in Lizzie Borden's house after all. I'm not sure when his wife died but my memories seem to be of a time after her passing. He was tall and thin and had white hair and we would often sit in the same pew at church. He seemed to always be wearing a dark suit but I always saw him at church and that was proper attire for church. I certainly don't remember being invited into the house and I would never knock on his door for anything. Not for Trick-or treat, not for Jerry's Kid's telethon money, not for anything. I was shocked when discussing this with my mother yesterday that we had indeed gone on a tour of the house and how could I not remember it when I remember the pattern on the floor of the bedroom I shared with my sister when I was barely two years old. I guess it was the creep factor even back then and admittedly my mom will say it was a weird house. Mr. Hudner had kept it authentic to it's own era right down to a birthing room which seems to be the room that made the biggest impression on my mother because she brought it up three or four times in our limited conversation.

For a long time I thought the house at the top of the street was where the murders had taken place. I think I was 8, close to 9, when I mentioned something about it to my mom and she corrected me. In middle school one of my classmate's uncles supposedly owned one of the Borden houses in Fall River and she regaled a story of how they had found an axe in the basement with a bloodstain on it. And there was the rumor that a similar axe had been found in the summerhouse. Imagine that, a family that had an axe at every house they owned? Houses that needed wood fuel to provide heat from hearths and stoves? Who would have thought? Back then I would have thought, and I would have believed what I thought.

We now know the summerhouse, known by the Borden family as the farm, was part of a dispute between Lizzie and her father earlier in the week of his death. At least we think we know she was upset that he had planned to sign the house over to another family member. In fact it was none other than Lizzie and her Sister Emma who did finally sell the house to one of the Gardner clan for whom the street it was on was named. Frank Gardner owned the house until 1947 when Mr. Hudner purchased it and it appears to have been owned by him or his family until 1996. It now has solid wood bright blue doors and some meager plantings in the front. Neither has done anything to change my overall impression of ominous sadness attached to despite a lack evidence to bolster this feeling as the people who have owned it, including Lizzie herself, seem to have enjoyed it as much as any house could be enjoyed.

It seems the house, much like Lizzie, is destined to ride out eternity in the shadow of the events of August 4, 1892 in a house across the river.