Lizzie Borden Society Forum

Sharing what seems to be an oddity of how the Borden family reported their information for the 1855 Massachusetts State Census. Hiram Harrington married Lurana Borden January 26, 1854, but on the 1855 Census (data gathered August 1855), Lurana is listed as a Borden and Hiram Harrington is listed as living with the Borden's at 12 Ferry, but his name is nowhere close to Lurana's. In all cases I'm familiar with, married couples are listed sequentially.

Knowing that Hiram and Andrew ended up disliking each other to a pretty strong degree, I'm always curious with data points that could possibly give us clues. I suppose the person who gave the census taker the names of the home occupants, could have listed the family members and the census taker gave everyone the same last name regardless of marriage status (which isn't noted on the census report), but then got Hiram and Selecta Morse correct.

I find this kind of stuff fascinating and fun.

Entry from 1854 Fall River Marriage Register. click to enlarge Click to enlarge

One of the insights that sticks with me, is how Harrington didn’t think it possible for Lizzie to be serving and kind to Andrew just before he was killed.
Was Hiram piling on. or did he genuinely believe this?

I could be way off on this, but on both my Irish and Italian sides of my family, family NEVER charged family for small or sometimes even large favors. I remember my Irish grandfather scolding me when I separated the CapriSun drink boxes for me and my sister when we were visiting in Florida. He said we share and we do not count between brother and sister.

I was oblivious to how kind it was of my cousin to always come over, no matter what the weather, and fix my unreliable used cars when I was in high school and early college and I wish I could go back in time and thank him properly, but he unfortunately passed away young. And my parents "charged us rent" when we lived at the house in college, but what they really did is put it in an account and gave it to us when we moved out.

If Hiram came from a family like that and then ran across Andrew's worldview regarding money and business as he applied to his own family, he may have immediately gotten a very negative impression that just got worse over time and ended up being mutual between them.

That was a great idea of your parents to charge you rent, so you learned responsibility and pushed yourself, but converted it into a starter fund for you when you left home.

My interpretation of Hiram on that particular point was that lizzie was not a demonstratively caring, affectionate individual and being randomly attentive like Lizzie claimed was out of character.