A road trip to historic Fall River Massachusetts. Fall River was the English name of the Pokanoket Wampanoug tribe’s name, “Quechquechan River” which loosely translated as “leaping/falling waters.” Though it was incorporated as a town in 1803, the Plymouth Colonists had started an earlier version back in 1653 that was called Freetown. Two of its biggest families were the Durfee’s (with a Revolutionary War hero, Capt. Joseph Durfee in the family,) and the Borden’s (Thomas Borden owned a sawmill and gristmill, later burned down by British forces in 1778.) In later years, the town suffered a horrible fire in 1843, losing 291 buildings and leaving 200 families homeless. The population was 8000 at the time.
And then of course there’s the lurid tale of Lizzie Andrew Borden and the brutal axe murders that killed her stepmother, Abby Durfee Gray and her father Andrew Jackson Borden on the morning of August 4th 1892. If you visit the Historical Society, (top photo), you can actually see the axe head that “may” have been used in the murders. But more on that later.
top photo: The Historical Society in a Federalist style house
2: the Lizzie Borden House
5: another Victorian house, found in the historic district
6: an imposing stone church, also found in the historic district
7: “Welcome to the historic Lizzie Borden House, one of the top 10 haunted places in America”
8: the Borden monument, located at Oak Grove Cemetery
9: the old burial vault at Oak Grove Cemetery, This cemetery was the final resting place of Lizzie Borden.
