Lizzie Borden Society Forum

Recently Ancestry .com made outbound passenger lists from shipping lines available. When I was hunting passports for Lizzie's grand tour group, I had an interest in Emma's Scotland trip and possibly finding out whether or not Bridget SUllivan did return to Ireland for a while after Lizzie's acquittal. My Titanic International archive assistant, Mike Poirier and I found a few interesting documents yesterday, which show Emma's trip aboard the Cymric and a really GOOD possibility for Bridget's return to Ireland in 1894. Both ships sailed Boston- Liverpool with a stop in Queenstown. Of course we cannot be positively positive about Bridget because it is a very common name, but the age and locale are a great match and the ship, as you see, is the same one Lizzie went to Europe on. Good chance it may be right. I have posted the documents, and some cropped closeups over at Warps and Wefts for ease of uploading directly, if you don't mind visiting there Link below.

I know it's been discussed on a previous thread, but-- is there a definitive record of "the" Bridget being wed in Montana?
If not, it would help support the theory that she met someone in Ireland, married there, then re-immigrated.

I always thought she was married in Montana. I think she did return to Ireland for a while but then came back, settled in Montana and married there.

I might be wrong.

Her husband worked in a smelter, so I get the impression Bridget met him out there in Anaconda. The mines were the big draw. Of course they could have married first and then moved out there together. I gather the little town in County Cork where Bridget was from was also a mining town-I have never been able to spell it though!

The name of the village from whence Bridget came is Allihies, as Shelley said in County Cork. It has another name also, but is more commonly known as Allihies, which is also the name of the surrounding parish.

I can't imagine that Bridget didn't receive something from The Sisters Borden, with a promise to settle far, far away and to keep her mouth shut.
I believe she knew things that could have cast Lizzie in a much harsher light, to say the least, and that Bridget contained herself for two reasons: 1) That Lizzie, Emma, and Uncle John would turn on her; and 2) The promise of remuneration.
I don't know how devout she was, but, if people of higher social standing were holding some threat above her head, she was smart enough to realize she didn't stand much of a chance.
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Was watching a program about hauntings last night, which involved Mary Surratt, her fondness for John Wilkes Booth, and the fallout from Lincoln's assassination. How she went to the gallows professing her innocence, how her son-- who was actively involved in the conspiracy-- fled the country. When he returned several years later, the charges against him were ultimately dropped. He probably could have saved his Mother by submitting himself as the scapegoat.
Bridget probably realized how convenient it would have been for her to have been tried and executed. Lizzie could have blamed her for the Great Bedroom Robbery and claimed she had been stealing all along, that Andrew and Abby had threatened to press charges, and that Bridget had committed the murders in a manner to try to frame Lizzie.
After all, Bridget was fairly immersed in soapy water that a.m. It would have been easy for her to wash up with her pails full of suds, and she had an excuse for wet clothing.
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Has the parish registry (or other records) in Bridget's village been checked, on the chance that she may have married there, in the interim between her departure from Fall River and her appearance in Montana?