Providence, RI and Fall River, MA - July 15, 2006

by The Cranky Yankee

(photos by C. LeBeau)

Saturday was beautiful day, even though there was a forecast for a chance of rain.  My friend, Elena, came to my house to pick me up at 10:30am and we drove down Rt. 6 to get to Providence, RI.  The plan was to hit Swan Point Cemetery, Lizzy Borden’s House in Fall River, MA, and maybe get over to NECON to meet some of her writer friends and check out the dealer’s room.  Originally, her daughter was suppose to come with us…she’s in college now and has an interest in New England history AND cemeteries! (The kid's got great taste!)  But she had to back out because of a previous engagement, so it was just me and Elena.

Route 6 going through western Rhode Island is a strange area.  I have always gotten weird vibes driving through it since I was a little kid.  Other people have told me the same thing…they say the area around the CT/RI border gives off bad juju.  For me, maybe it’s the run-down and abandoned buildings along Rt. 6 (and Rt. 44)…they’ve always been there.  Like everybody left in a hurry and a few of the locals got left behind…the inbreds and whatnot.  New England’s Appalachia.  The stuff H.P. Lovecraft writes about in his stories…the degenerates left behind that hide something sinister.  But then again, I have an over-active imagination.

How appropriate!  We were going to Swan Point Cemetery to visit Lovecraft’s grave!  Elena had never been there.  While visiting, I was suppose to give her a “tour”…tell her everything I know about cemeteries…in this case, rural cemeteries like how Swan Point is designed.  So be it.  We got there after making good time on Rt. 6 and following Mapquest directions.  I couldn’t remember the exact section where Lovecraft was buried, so we stopped at the manager’s building…which was closed.  Fear not!  In the entranceway is a new fangled machine that tells you where everyone is buried!  Punch in the name you’re looking for and it spits out a map showing you the section the person is buried in.  How cool is that!?  Every cemetery should have one!

Walking to Lovecraft’s final resting place, I gave Elena the lowdown on the rural cemetery design (of which Mt. Auburn Cemetery was the first of its kind) and its history.  She brought her sketch pad (she’s an artist, after all) and sketched many stones that caught her eye.  After paying our respects to the great writer, we wondered around checking out the stones and I explained (or tried to…I still have to refer to books which I didn’t have with me) the significance of the various symbols.  We spent about two hours there.

It was getting late and we decided to find a place to eat. But a quick call to the Lizzie Borden House on Elena’s cell phone revealed that the last tour was at 3pm and it was 1:30.  So we skipped lunch and headed right to Fall River.  We munched on snacks Elena thought to bring and got there just in time for the 2pm tour.  As you all know, Lizzie Borden is famous for allegedly killing her father and step-mother with an axe.   I say “allegedly” because she was acquitted.  It is still debated by amateur and expert crime solvers whether she really did it or not.  The house where the famous deeds happened is now a bed & breakfast inn. 

The house itself is not a fancy house…it’s an old two-story Victorian era, working-class building (reminded me of the house I grew up in).  The Borden family was wealthy, but the father was a penny-pinching miser and would not live “on the hill” where the well-to-do lived back in the day.  In the back of the property is the visitor office, reconstructed like the original barn (the barn was torn done decades ago).  There, you can buy all kinds of paraphernalia such as key chains in the shape of an axe head, a Lizzy Borden bobblehead, t-shirts (with the famous poem), books about the crime, and even a cooking apron!  We paid our admission and joined some others outside the front door, where the tour guides let us into front parlor. 

The house has been extensively restored so that it is as close to Lizzy Borden’s era as possible.  Because it is a B&B, it has to have running water, electricity and a modern kitchen, but the rest of the house is almost as it was back in the day…right down to the ugly Victorian wallpaper (just like the front hallway of my old childhood home!).  The furniture in the house in not original, as Lizzy and her sister Emma put it all in storage and the warehouse was later destroyed by a storm.  Only Lizzy's sewing machine was original.  But the B&B did a great job picking out furniture and decorations to possibly resemble the Bordens’ home, using old photos as a guide.  When they restored the house, they also excavated the backyard and found many Victorian era items thrown there, possibly by the Borden family themselves.  These are on display in the visitor office and throughout the house.  The tour guides take you into each room, explaining its purpose and where it stands in relation to The Crime.  And they allow cameras!

The murder victims were found in two separate rooms: the father on the couch in the downstairs sitting room, and the stepmother on the floor in the guest bedroom upstairs.  The B&B displays many of the (graphic) crime scene photos to show in relation to where everything exactly is and was.  Being the ghoulie girls that we are, Elena and I had our pictures taken with each of us sitting on the exact murder site.  I sat on the couch where the father was found, and Elena laid down on the floor where the stepmother was.  While some of the other tourists gave us the fish-eye for doing this, the tour guides were nonchalant…they explained that some guests specifically ask for the murder room to sleep in and some even forego the bed and sleep on the floor where the second body was found.  We were light-weights compared to those folks.

After the tour, we finally went to a restaurant…a local Portuguese place called Terra Nostra Restaurant on Rodman St.  We split a seafood and pasta dish that was pretty good.  We realize that we didn’t have enough time to make it to NECON, so with the last bit of time we had, we took a ride up to the hill section to look at Lizzy Borden’s home after she was acquitted, Maplecroft.  From there, we went straight to Oak Grove Cemetery where she is buried, along with the rest of the family in the family plot.  Elena and I walk around the cemetery a bit, marveling at the nicely carved stones, then we went home.

It turned out to be a really nice day despite the storm warnings earlier.  Nothing like a nice gruesome tour and some walks in the cemeteries to brighten up ones spirit!  There are more places to visit through out New England and I hope to get to them before the summer is out.

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