{"id":14594,"date":"2022-10-31T12:08:43","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T16:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vivafallriver.com\/support\/?p=14594"},"modified":"2023-07-25T13:06:19","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T17:06:19","slug":"lizzie-borden-letter-delivered-126-years-later-to-the-fall-river-historical-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vivafallriver.com\/support\/lizzie-borden-letter-delivered-126-years-later-to-the-fall-river-historical-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Lizzie Borden letter delivered 126 years later \u2014 to the Fall River Historical Society"},"content":{"rendered":"

FALL RIVER \u2014 Almost 126 years after it was originally written, a letter from\u00a0Lizzie Borden<\/a>\u00a0has found its way to its destination\u00a0\u2014 just three blocks from her home, although it traveled across the country first.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Fall River Historical Society<\/a>\u00a0Curator Michael Martins, the museum has acquired a rare letter written by Borden that was recently\u00a0up for sale by RR Auction of Boston<\/a>. The letter, which was on sale until Oct. 12,\u00a0sold for $6,970<\/a>. \u00a0The letter is \u201caccompanied by the original mailing envelope addressed in Borden’s hand, with the stamp clipped off. Housed in a custom-designed purple leather presentation folder, with a gilt-stamped spine and blind stamped ‘L.B.’ axe on the front,” according to RR Auction. Martins said a private foundation bought it on the Historical Society\u2019s behalf, but he\u2019s not at liberty to disclose which group that is.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey requested anonymity, but they were delighted to acquire it for the society,\u201d Martins said. \u201cThey were thrilled that they were able to get it into our public collection.\u201d<\/p>\n

An 1896 letter from Lizzie Borden to a Miss Jennie F. Boas is up for auction by Boston-based RR Auctions. What’s in Lizzie Borden’s letter, and who did she send it to?<\/em><\/p>\n

The letter, dated Dec. 9, 1896, was written by Borden only a few years after her father and stepmother, Andrew and Abby Borden were killed on Aug. 4, 1892; the two were found dead in their Second Street home, butchered with a hatchet. Lizzie, the only suspect, was acquitted after a sensational trial that made international headlines due to the crime\u2019s brutality and the blueblood status of those involved.<\/p>\n

At the time of the letter\u2019s writing, Lizzie and her sister, Emma, were living at 306 French St., a 13-room Victorian home that Lizzie would name Maplecroft shortly after the turn of the 20th century. The short letter, on personal letterhead, is addressed to Miss Jennie F. Boas of 227 Whipple St., and is a request for help with a project and some royal purple ribbon to \u201ctie the pages.\u201d\u00a0Martins and Historical Society Assistant Curator Dennis Binette wrote about this letter in their landmark book \u201cParallel Lives: A Social History of Lizzie A. Borden and her Fall River,<\/a>\u201d published in 2010. \u00a0Martins said Boas \u201cwas a member of the Jewish community in Fall River, and she worked as a stenographer\u201d in the Granite Block, a massive business center located about where Gromada Plaza is today.<\/p>\n

According to \u201cParallel Lives,\u201d Boas\u2019 parents were David S. and Augusta (Nelson) Boas. David Boas was in \u201cthe men\u2019s clothing business with Henry Strassman, founding the firm Strassman and Boas; the shop was located on South Main Street in the Borden Block, almost directly across from the A.J. Borden Building.\u201d An ad for their business from 1875 places their store at 52 S. Main St., about where the Academy Building is.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unknown how Borden and Boas knew each other, or exactly what project Lizzie needed ribbon for.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the pages referred to in the letter remains a mystery but, considering the date of the note, it is possible that the activity had something to do with the upcoming holiday,\u201d Martins and Binette write in \u201cParallel Lives.\u201d \u201cHad Lizzie secured Jennie\u2019s assistance in preparing pages for keepsake booklets intended as gifts for her closest friends at Christmastime?\u201d<\/p>\n

Adding it to the Historical Society’s collection<\/strong><\/p>\n

Martins said the letter will enter the museum\u2019s vast repository of Lizzie Borden material, the world’s largest collection of primary source material pertaining to Borden’s life. It is\u00a0available for people to use for research purposes.\u00a0\u201cWe don\u2019t exhibit this type of material because of fading and paper\u2019s ephemerous, and of course is prone to deterioration, so they\u2019re only exhibited for special occasions,\u201d Martins said. \u201cBut the collection here is a research collection so if people were interested in looking at the document \u2014 we don\u2019t allow people to handle original documents like this because of their rarity, of course \u2014 but we would make facsimiles available.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martins said his next step is to establish the document\u2019s provenance \u2013 tracing back each step in how the letter found its way into the marketplace and to his museum. \u00a0“It was last sold in 2019 by another auction house,” Martins said. “It had been around for quite a while. I can remember back in the late ’80s it was actually for sale by a dealer in California, who had a significant price on it at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

This simple letter traveled from Lizzie\u2019s hands to Boas\u2019, wound up for sale across the continent, and then back home to Fall River; however that happened, Martins said, \u201cwe\u2019re delighted to add it to the collection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dan Medeiros can be reached at\u00a0dmedeiros@heraldnews.com<\/a>. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News today.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FALL RIVER \u2014 Almost 126 years after it was originally written, a letter from\u00a0Lizzie Borden\u00a0has found its way to its destination\u00a0\u2014 just three blocks from her home, although it traveled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19485,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[26,375,505,440],"class_list":["post-14594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-attractions","tag-fall-river","tag-fall-river-historical-society","tag-fall-river-ma","tag-lizzie-borden"],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivafallriver.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivafallriver.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivafallriver.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivafallriver.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivafallriver.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14594"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vivafallriver.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20290,"href":"https:\/\/vivafallriver.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14594\/revisions\/20290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivafallriver.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivafallriver.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivafallriver.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivafallriver.com\/support\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}