Who Were Lizzie Borden’s Parents? What to Know About the Real Andrew and Abby Borden in Netflix’s Monster

On the morning of August 4, 1892, wealthy businessman Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby, were found brutally murdered inside their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Andrew had been attacked while resting on a sofa, and Abby was discovered on the floor of an upstairs guest room. Suspicion soon fell on Andrew’s 32-year-old daughter Lizzie Borden, who was tried for both murders but acquitted the following year.The case inspired a rhyme generations of children have repeated:Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother 40 whacks. And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.Nearly every detail is wrong. Abby was Lizzie’s stepmother. The wounds were consistent with a hatchet, not an axe. And a medical examiner counted 18 or 19 cutting injuries to Abby’s head and 10 to 11 wounds to Andrew’s, not 40 and 41.The rhyme also left little room for Andrew and Abby to exist as anything other than Lizzie Borden’s victims. In reality, they’d been married for 27 years, during which time Andrew built one of Fall River’s largest fortunes and Abby tried to find her place in a household divided by money and resentment.Their lives and deaths are revisited in the Netflix series, Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story. Here’s everything you should know about Lizzie Borden’s parents, Andrew and Abby Borden.Who Was Andrew Borden?Andrew Jackson Borden was born in Fall River on September 13, 1822. He first married Sarah Morse, on December 25, 1845. The couple had three daughters: Emma, Alice, and Lizzie. Alice died at age 2. Sarah died of uterine congestion and spinal disease in 1863. Two years later, on June 6, 1865, Andrew married Abby Gray.Although the Borden name carried weight in the city, Andrew built his own fortune. He was a cabinetmaker and furniture dealer who sold to both the living and the dead, according to The Trial of Lizzie Borden by Cara Robertson. In an 1859 rial, Andrew’s property was estimated at between $200,000 and $300,000, an enormous fortune in 1892 (equivalent to more than $7.4 million today). He had a reputation for paying cash, avoiding debt, and watching every dollar he made.Robertson quoted family friend Alice Russell who described Andrew as “a plain-living man with rigid ideas, and very set.” And one newspaper called him “close-fisted, but square and just in his dealings.”Who Was Abby Borden?Abby Durfee Gray was born in Fall River on January 21, 1828. She was 37 and had never been married when she wed Andrew, 42 at the time, in 1865. Andrew’s oldest daughter, Emma, was 14 at the time of the wedding, while Lizzie was 4.Andrew and Abby never had children together. Claims that he primarily wanted a housekeeper and mother for his daughters remain speculation. Their doctor testified that he saw nothing to suggest their marriage was not cordial.Abby’s position inside the family was less secure. From the beginning, Emma called her stepmother “Abby” rather than “Mother.” Lizzie called her “Mother” for years, although it’s reported that by 1887, she started referring to her as “Mrs. Borden.” Abby also appears to have had little authority in the household. Family friend Alice Russell put it bluntly: “Mrs. Borden did not control the house,” Robertson wrote in her book.Why Did Lizzie Borden Call Her Stepmother “Mrs. Borden”?Money brought the family’s resentments into the open. In 1887, Andrew secretly bought a house on Fourth Street for Abby’s half-sister and placed it in his wife’s name.When Emma and Lizzie found out, they were not happy. Worried about their inheritance, they wanted something, too. “What he did for her, he ought to do for his own children,” Lizzie later testified. He gave them the old Borden house on Ferry Street, which they later sold back to him for $5,000.The peace offering didn’t produce a truce. Lizzie later testified that the Fourth Street “affair” led her to stop calling Abby “Mother,” Her usual form of address became “Mrs. Borden.”Witnesses disagreed about the hostility inside the house. Bridget Sullivan, the family’s live-in maid, said she never heard Lizzie and Abby so much as raise their voice at each other. She also testified that the daughters often ate separately from Andrew and Abby. A dressmaker recalled Lizzie calling Abby “a mean good-for-nothing thing,” while a friend said Lizzie considered her deceitful.Why Did the Wealthy Bordens Live So Modestly?The family lived at 92 Second Street, a short walk from Andrew’s businesses. His fortune could have bought them a home on the fashionable Hill, but he never moved them there.The converted two-family house had running water and a toilet in the cellar, but few luxuries. Its odd layout also gave the family little privacy, with some bedrooms opening into others.After money and jewelry vanished from Andrew and Abby’s bedroom during an unsolved 1891 burglary, the family became more distrustful of each other. Andrew and Abby locked the door connecting their bedroom to Lizzie’s, and Lizzie placed furniture against her bedroom door.Were Andrew and Abby Borden Poisoned Before Their Murders?Two days before the killings, members of the household developed stomach issues after eating leftover swordfish during the August heat. Abby spent a miserable night vomiting and told Dr. Seabury Bowen that she feared someone had poisoned the family.Bowen suspected spoiled food and followed her home to examine Andrew, who refused to see him. The family became sick again after eating mutton stew, and Sullivan was still nauseated on the morning of the murders.No poison was found in Andrew or Abby’s remains. Foodborne illness was common during hot New England summers, but Abby’s fear reveals how uneasy the household had become.What Happened to Andrew and Abby Borden?On August 4, 1892, Abby ate breakfast with Andrew and their houseguest, John Morse, before starting her housework. At about 9:30 a.m., she went upstairs to straighten the guest room, where she was attacked and killed.Andrew left to conduct business and returned shortly before 11. He laid down on the sitting-room sofa and was killed there. Medical evidence established Abby had died first.The residents of Fall River became fixated on who died first. Many believed that if Andrew had been killed first, Abby would have inherited part of his fortune and her sisters might eventually have received it. An August 13, 1892, an article in the Boston Daily Globe disputed that interpretation. Without a will, the paper reported, Abby’s claim on the estate would have ended when she died. Even so, the order of the murders remained part of the search for a motive.Lizzie went on trial for both murders in 1893 and walked out of court a free woman. No one else was ever charged. Lizzie and Emma later gave Abby’s share of the Fourth Street house to Sarah Whitehead and Priscilla Fish, along with her belongings and bank deposits, according to Borden researcher Leonard Rebello, who wrote Lizzie Borden, Past and Present.In the end, Abby’s relatives got the property that caused so much trouble in the first place.How to Watch Monster: The Lizzie Borden StoryMonster: The Lizzie Borden Story revisits the brutal murders of Andrew (Charlie Hunman) and Abby Borden (Rebecca Hall), offering a fictional version of their backstory and relationship with Lizzie. The eight-episode series is now streaming on Netflix.