Lizzie Borden's Real Name: Lizzie Andrew Borden

Quick answer: Lizzie Borden's full name is Lizzie Andrew Borden. She was born on July 19, 1860, in Fall River, Massachusetts, and became famous after being tried—and acquitted—for the 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother.

Real name and early life

Biography.com and the Library of Congress identify Lizzie Andrew Borden as her full name (Biography.com; LOC). Lizzie was her given first name; Andrew was a middle name; Borden was the family surname. Her mother, Sarah, died when Lizzie was a small child; her father, Andrew Jackson Borden, a prosperous but frugal Fall River businessman, later married Abby Durfee Gray. Lizzie and her older sister Emma grew up amid reported household tension over money and property. She taught Sunday school at Central Congregational Church and took part in local temperance and charity work before the 1892 killings made her a national figure.

Case and later life

On August 4, 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were found murdered in the Second Street home—Abby upstairs and Andrew on a sitting-room sofa—both struck with a hatchet-like weapon. Lizzie alerted the household maid, Bridget Sullivan. She was arrested later that August after inconsistent inquest statements and other circumstantial evidence, including the burning of a dress she said was paint-stained. At her June 1893 trial in New Bedford, the prosecution’s case remained largely circumstantial; her inquest testimony was excluded. On June 20, 1893, an all-male jury acquitted her after about ninety minutes. No one else was ever convicted. She and Emma later lived at a Fall River house called Maplecroft; she sometimes used the form Lizbeth. She died of pneumonia on June 1, 1927, in Fall River (Biography.com). Popular culture kept the case famous, but encyclopedic records retain Lizzie Andrew Borden.

Name notes for searchers

“Lizzy” and post-trial “Lizbeth” appear in some catalogs; prefer Biography.com and LOC for the birth form. Wikipedia is a pointer after primary citations.