Andrew Borden as landlord

[Richard]

I was reading the Rebello book, Lizzie Borden Past & Present, and was trying to trace Andrew Borden's career. There is some documentation on his casket making and furniture business with his business partner, Mr. Almy, but does anyone know when he started buying real estate, when he started collecting rents from tenants, or when he began becoming affiliated with the textile mills?

I'm working on some fiction about the Borden family in 1875, just a few years after the family moved to 92 2nd Street, and I'm trying to get a focus on where Andrew was at in his career during that year. It seems from the Rebello book, that by this point, Border, Almy and Co was even selling refrigerators! That was a bit of a surprise.

[Kat]

HI!

I've been thinking about your question, and since you have Rebello (good for you!), for further info I'd suggest using City Directories and/or census records to gain employment information, if you have access to such things.
Other than that, ads in newspapers, but that sounds like it would be hard.

Also, check the "Appendix C" in Rebello. There's a sort of timeline of Andrew's investments. (Pg. 549)

[FairhavenGuy]

By the way, the "refrigerators" Andrew would have been selling could only have been some kind of icebox.

The first commercial home refrigerator wasn't produced until 1913. It was called the Domelre and cost $900.

[Harry]

Hello Richard, welcome.

The Dun & Bradstreet reports on the firm of Borden & Almy (page 543, Rebello) would certainly indicate that Andrew was well on his way by 1875 to being a very wealthy man. Re the firm:

"Worth $100,000 to $125,000, sound and substantial (March 18, 1870)"

"Means large, doing well and in excellent standing and credit. (Sept 7, 1872)"

"Making money all the time." (March 19, 1873)"

Most of his early purchases of land and property seems to have been in partnership with Almy although both of them also seemed to purchase property independent of each other. On page 54 - "Mr. Almy retired in 1878 but remained in real estate with Mr. Borden until 1881."

Good luck with the writing.

[Richard]

I did look deeper into the Rebello book and I was surprised to see so much material about his real estate holdings, etc. There is a lot of material based on mortgages and addresses, but I would be curious to know if any of those investments were residential property. When I hear that he walked about town collecting his own rents, was that business owners who rented in the commercial buildings that he owned, or was it possible that he was a "slumlord", owning buildings that rented apartments to Portugese immigrants. And would it be plausible that Andrew personally collected rent from apartment dwellers.

Is it really true that he would sell eggs on the street? I read that in more than a few places and don't know if there is any positive proof of that. It sounds incredible, but it was a very different time and place, and Andrew Borden was an miserly eccentric.

[FairhavenGuy]

Richard, Hi.

If I were you, I'd check into the Portuguese population in Fall River in 1875, if it's important to your story.

Today, of course, the Fall River and New Bedford area are very heavily Portuguese--a majority, in fact, in both cities. I think, though, that their arrival was later than 1875. Irish and English were most likely the largest ethnic groups in 1875. Portuguese, I think, came in more in the late 1800s and heavily in through the 1920s. Again in the 1960s there was another large influx.

If Andrew rented residential property, more of his tenants would have been Irish or English, I think, in the 1870s.

Mark A. probably knows more about Fall River's Portuguese history than I do, but if it's like New Bedford's the Portuguese were relatively late arrivals.

[Kat]

I think we found one reference to Andrew bringing eggs to town really truly one time.

I found him in the 1892 City Directory at the UMASS web site listed as President Union Savings Bank.

In the 1880 census listed there Andrew's occupation is "Retired Merchant."

I think you can get to the UMASS site from the LizzieAndrewBorden website, Online Resources.

[augusta]

He would be seen with a basket of eggs hanging from his arm. I think he mostly sold them from his house. The family must have consumed them too. On Thursday, August 4, 1892, the guy from the Swansea farm was supposed to stop by the house on Second Street with his regular delivery of Borden farm eggs, but John Morse went on his own the day before to pick them up. It makes one wonder if Morse was making sure the 'egg man' wouldn't interrupt anything that Thursday (he would come around 11 am ...).

Andrew did not belong to any of the several fraternal-like organizations of the day: the Odd Fellows, the Masons, etc.

He was a Quaker, but when he did go to church he went to - oh, I always get these mixed up - the First Congregational or Central. There was a Quaker meeting house in Fall River. I have to wonder if he stopped being a Quaker.

He was a very tight-fisted businessman. He would hang on for that last dollar. Fellow businessman or family - it wouldn't matter. He was known for being a hard-nosed landlord. I have read that he would give tenants virtually no grace period, and that he acquired some, if not much, of his property from foreclosures.

He had some good parts to him, too, tho. He wasn't a total nasty Scrooge. There are examples here and there of him being very human and caring.

He was widely known as a very honest person in his business dealings. And he almost never borrowed money. I think there's one debt that is listed for like a thousand dollars at one time.
During his funeral procession, many of the town's businessmen tipped their hats out of respect as Andrew's coffin passed by.

[Kat]

In the land transactions in the back of Rebello's book there does show mortgages taken out or settled. So he was borrowing money at times. Also, there shows one foreclosure. Pages 553-554.

1875:
"April 2
Mortgage from George G. Pierce, FallRiver. (Book 82: 179)."
....
1877:
"Andrew J. Borden, William M. Almy & Theodore D. Wood*, business partners, foreclosed and sold the lot of land in Swansea, Massachusetts, to William Borden for $1,930.00. (Book 82: 180)."

--*There's the business partner, Har, who you brought up.
Also, since it was a 3 way partnership which foreclosed on this property, how come Andrew- only -gets the bad rep?

[Richard]

In my story, I need to have Lizzie, who is 18 years old, go to collect rent for her father on a day when he is too ill to leave the house. I want to have her go to a dwelling that is quite modest and housing immigrants. They don't have to be Portuguese, but before Harry mentioned that these immigrants would have been, in 1878, mostly Irish and English, I envisioned her walking into a tenement apartment that has some textile mill workers living there in distressed circumstances. She has a moment of hesitancy in taking money from them and has some ill feelings towards her father.

This could all be a romantic dream and A. Borden didn't have any tenements that he could landlord over, at least in 1878. It occured to me in reading Rabello that most of A. Borden's tenants may have been store owners, business men renting office space, etc.

I can easily change the story to have Lizzie get into an immigrant apartment through another plot device and not through the device of collecting rent for her father.

[Kat]

In 1875, Morse came and lived with the Bordens for a year. He had the little room in the attic, which is now the attic bathroom.
You therefore have an extra character if you need one.