I was reading an article on lizzie's ancestors and found something interesting.
Research on Lizzie's genealogy found and interesting twist: While Lizzie was found not guilty of patricle with strong evidence against her, she had five-greats grand father who was found guilty of matricide on no more testimony of what a man had a dreamed. Lizzie desended from Thomas Cronell, born 1627, and executed in 1673. Cornell was convicted of matricide on the testimony of a man who said that the late Mrs. Cornell had come to him in a dream and accused her son of having killed her. He was certainly not quilty.
My thing is, maybe Lizzie was predestined to murder since she had the vein already there with a 5th generation grandfather convicted of murder?
Just a thought anyway.
Suicide is painless It brings on many changes and I will take my leave when I please.
Apparently Elaine Forman Crane who wrote on the Cornell murder shared that idea. Although a reviewer of Crane's book -- Killed Strangely: the Death of Rebecca Cornell -- obviously didn't buy into the theory.
Excited by her discovery that three brutal murders in the nineteenth-century Northeast (including the Lizzie Borden case) involved persons born with the surname Cornell, Crane jumps to the dubious conclusion that these seemingly unstable individuals shared Thomas Cornell’s "gene pool" (135). Reading backwards from this shaky tableau, Crane seems to think that at the very least the violent murder of his wife by Alvin Cornell in Vermont in 1843 when linked to Rebecca Cornell’s violent death gives "credence" to researchers who argue for "the heritability of a tendency toward aggression," putting certain families at greater risk (133, 143).
Click on the link below for a fascinating look at the legal system of the time with its verbatim transcription of Thomas Cornell's 1673 trial proceeding. http://www.rootsweb.com/~rinewpor/Cornell.html
I really don't believe that murder is hereditary or genetic. Lizzie probably didn't even know about this grandfather of hers.
I have a great-grandmother who was on trial for witchcraft in Salem, MA. That doesn't mean I'm a "witch." I just found this out recently while doing genealogy research. My grandmother and great-grandmother had no idea and never mentioned this once. So, once some generations are gapped the stories are usually lost for good...
Each one of us probably has someone in our genepool who was in interesting circumstances similar to Lizzie's.
LIZZIE BORDEN'S THEME SONG
(to the tune of Green Acres)
Fall River is the place to be,
city living is the life for me.
Bought a nicer house,
so big and wide!
Forget 92 Second Street,
that's where I was charged with homicide!
We've got a discussion around here where I'm trying to prove the descent from Cornell, but I found more sources against the connection and only one for the connection:
That family on-line site claim.
I really think they jumped to a false conclusion by fastening onto that first name Innocent. All other genealogies I've seen link that name *Innocent* with the last name *Wardell* in the Borden line.
Kat @ Thu Sep 29, 2005 5:24 am wrote:We've got a discussion around here where I'm trying to prove the descent from Cornell, but I found more sources against the connection and only one for the connection:
That family on-line site claim.
I really think they jumped to a false conclusion by fastening onto that first name Innocent. All other genealogies I've seen link that name *Innocent* with the last name *Wardell* in the Borden line.
