All About Lizzie Borden's Family

On August 4, 1892, Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby, were found brutally murdered inside their Fall River, Mass., home. Andrew had been struck repeatedly with a hatchet-like weapon while lying on a sitting room sofa; Abby had been killed upstairs roughly 90 minutes earlier.

Suspicion quickly centered on Andrew’s 32-year-old daughter, Lizzie, who was home that morning along with the family’s maid, Bridget Sullivan. Lizzie was arrested and tried for the murders the following year, but an all-male jury acquitted her after less than two hours of deliberation. No one else was ever charged.

The Borden household, however, had been troubled long before the murders. Lizzie and her older sister, Emma, had a strained relationship with their stepmother, while disputes over money and property had divided the family. At the same time, the sisters lived an unusual existence: daughters of one of Fall River’s wealthiest men who nevertheless remained dependent on their frugal father well into adulthood.

Andrew Borden had amassed a fortune estimated at $250,000 to $300,000—equivalent to approximately $7 million in 2026—through real estate, banking and business investments. Yet despite his considerable wealth, he was famously frugal.

Rather than moving to “the Hill,” where many of Fall River’s prosperous families lived in large Victorian homes, Andrew remained at 92 Second Street, near his business interests. The house was comfortable and the family employed a live-in maid, but it lacked amenities such as hot running water and gas lighting that Andrew could easily have afforded.

For Emma and Lizzie, the contrast may have been especially noticeable. Other daughters of wealthy Fall River families attended parties and social events designed to introduce them into society and potential marriages. The Borden sisters had no such formal introduction, and neither ever married.

Andrew’s stinginess has sometimes been exaggerated. Lizzie traveled extensively in Europe in 1890, and both daughters received financial support from their father. However, he remained firmly in control of the family fortune. Emma and Lizzie were 41 and 32 in 1892 and still lived under his roof and depended upon him financially.

Lizzie apparently found her family situation less than ideal. After her European trip, she reportedly told friends how unhappy she was to be returning home. She also rented her own pew at a fashionable Congregational church attended by residents of the Hill, suggesting that she sought a social world beyond Second Street.

Another source of friction was Andrew’s second wife. He married Abby Durfee Gray in 1865, several years after the death of Sarah, the mother of Emma and Lizzie. Lizzie was a young child when Abby entered the family, but their relationship deteriorated over time.

A major rupture came in 1887, when Andrew transferred property to Abby that benefited members of her family. Emma and Lizzie objected, and Andrew subsequently gave his daughters property of comparable value. But the transaction appears to have left lasting resentment rather than ending the dispute.

The divisions increasingly shaped everyday life inside the house. Later accounts describe Emma and Lizzie eating separately from Andrew and Abby, while the sisters stopped referring to their stepmother as “Mother” or “Abby” and instead called her “Mrs. Borden.” The family’s dressmaker also recalled Lizzie speaking disparagingly about her stepmother.

Another disturbing episode occurred in 1891, when cash and jewelry disappeared from Andrew and Abby’s bedroom. Police investigated but never identified the thief. Later accounts have suggested that Andrew and Abby suspected Lizzie, although she was never charged. Afterward, the family installed additional locks throughout the house, including on bedroom doors—another indication of the mistrust that had developed within the household.

Yet open confrontation appears to have possibly been unusual. Sullivan later testified that she never heard members of the family quarrel. Whatever resentments existed may have remained beneath the surface, making the Borden household perhaps less a place of constant fighting than one marked by emotional distance and unresolved grievances.

Emma and Lizzie, meanwhile, remained exceptionally close. Emma had been 12 when their mother died and reportedly promised to look after the much younger Lizzie. By adulthood, the household appeared increasingly divided into two sides: Andrew and Abby, and Emma and Lizzie.

In the decades since the murders, some writers have suggested that the conflicts inside the Borden home went deeper than disputes over money and property. Most controversial is the theory that Andrew sexually abused one or both of his daughters and that years of abuse might have provided another motive for the killings.

The theory has appeared in books, plays and dramatizations of the case, sometimes portraying Lizzie as a victim who eventually turned on her father. But there is no known contemporary testimony, diary, letter or other evidence showing that Andrew sexually abused either daughter. Neither Lizzie nor Emma made such an accusation, and the theory played no role in the investigation or trial.

What is documented is a woman who remained financially dependent on her father into her thirties, had a deeply strained relationship with her stepmother and apparently regarded her home life as unhappy.

In the weeks before the murders, several events added to the unease surrounding the Borden household. Emma left Fall River in July to visit friends in Fairhaven, while Lizzie spent time away before returning to Second Street.

Then members of the household became ill with stomach problems, prompting Abby to worry they had been poisoned. Their physician, Dr. Seabury Bowen, examined the family but believed their symptoms were more likely caused by something they had eaten.

Investigators later learned of another potentially significant incident from the day before the murders. A Fall River drugstore clerk claimed that on August 3, Lizzie had tried to purchase prussic acid, a highly toxic poison, saying she wanted it to clean a sealskin cape. The clerk refused to sell it without a prescription. Lizzie denied the encounter, and although the prosecution sought to introduce the allegation at her trial, the judge ruled the testimony inadmissible.

That same day, Lizzie visited her friend, Alice Russell, and seemed unusually worried. Russell later testified that Lizzie said she felt as though “something was hanging over” her and feared something might happen to her father. She also spoke about the family’s recent illness and suggested that Andrew had enemies who might want to harm him.

The following morning, Andrew and Abby were dead.

Once Lizzie became the primary suspect, investigators scrutinized the family’s private disputes for a possible motive. There was no shortage of material: resentment toward Abby, arguments over property, frustration with Andrew’s control and a considerable inheritance at stake.

Even the order of the murders had financial implications. Andrew and Abby had no wills, and had Andrew died first, Abby would have been entitled to a share of his estate that could later have passed to her relatives. Instead, Abby died first. Her property passed to Andrew and, after his death, ultimately to his daughters, although Emma and Lizzie later reached a settlement with Abby’s relatives over her estate.

Yet there is an intriguing complication to the idea that Lizzie killed because she believed her father would never give her the life she wanted. Notes kept by Andrew Jennings, Lizzie’s defense attorney, indicate that shortly before the murders Andrew had asked a financial advisor to look for a house on the Hill to satisfy his daughters. If so, one of the family's longstanding sources of friction may actually have been nearing a resolution.

None of the tensions inside 92 Second Street proved Lizzie committed murder. Andrew supported his daughters financially, and family disputes over money, independence and a stepparent were hardly unique to the Bordens.

Lizzie lived in considerable comfort while apparently longing for a different life, remained dependent on a wealthy father who controlled the family fortune and had a deeply strained relationship with her stepmother. Whether those resentments had anything to do with the murders remains unknown. Lizzie was acquitted in 1893, and the killings were never solved, leaving the complicated relationships inside the Borden home as one of the enduring questions surrounding the case.