The Borghinis

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Legends & Lore

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Photographed by Cosmos Mariner, October 1, 2025

1. The Borghinis Marker

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Excerpt:  The Borghinis were a legendary historical family from the Caddo community of Lawrence County, Alabama. Italian immigrant Salvatore Borghini, Sr.,

Photographed by Cosmos Mariner, October 1, 2025

2. The Borghinis Marker

Looking east; Lawrence County Veterans Memorial Park is in the background.

married Kentucky girl Jane Stegall and, in 1849, relocated to a four-hundred-acre ranch in Caddo, where they raised a son, Salvatore Borghini, Jr., and two daughters, Dora and Mary.
Salvatore Borghini, Jr., disappeared in 1870, never to be seen again. Many thought he had fled the country, possibly for Italy and its believed likely to escape a murder prosecution. Two years later, Salvatore Borghini, Sr., died of heart failure, leaving his wife Jane and his daughters Dora and Mary to fend for themselves in the ravaged post-Civil War American South. As Italians and Catholics, they had always felt isolated from the rest of the Caddo community.
The Borghini women were saddled with a large farm to manage. Left to their own devices, the Borghini sisters became legends themselves. It was said they worked their own land, rustled their own cattle, and rode horses better than any man. They wore trousers, toted pistols, and smoked corncob pipes. To make ends meet, they did a bit of moonshining, though with an Italian flair. Instead of whiskey, the sisters specialized in blackberry and grape wine, stomping the fruit with their bare feet, as it had

Photographed by Cosmos Mariner, October 1, 2025

3. Lawrence County Veterans Memorial Park

The marker is on the left, just inside the park entrance.

been done in the old country. The sisters also found a fair amount of trouble. They would catch charges over the years for concealing a pistol, fighting with sheriff’s deputies, and assaulting a roadcrew blazing a mail route through their property.

(By Chelsea Retherford, The Moulton Advertiser, Nov 23, 2021)  Excerpt:  Lawrence County Archivist Wendy Hazle, who also serves as LCHPS vice president, presented the history of the Borghini family, specifically the enthralling tale of Mary and Dora Borghini, at the marker dedication:
When Salvatore Sr. dies in 1871, his mortgage is paid off, and the property and his business ventures in the wine industry are left to his 56-year-old wife and their teenage daughters. The people of the community expect them to act like helpless women, but if the Borghini women do that, they will lose everything their husband and father worked so hard to gain. If they don’t adopt the role that society demands

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of them, they will be ostracized even more by their neighbors. Instead of conforming to societal standards in Lawrence County at the time, the three women do “the unthinkable” by trading in their skirts for trousers and their bonnets for guns. They ride horses astride, they plow fields, they ride the fences and make repairs, they work the cattle and the hogs, they harvest fruits and vegetables, and they make wine. Their neighbors are horrified.
Thanks to archival records, the notable story of the Borghini sisters lives on even after their deaths; Dora died in an explosion at Thrasher’s Mill on July 18, 1913 — it is speculated that she may have taken a job at the saw and grist mill to help pay the $200 she is fined for attacking and beating a man who was seen trespassing and cutting fence on the Borghini property in 1912. Mary died at the age of 57 on June 20, 1925, from gangrene after falling and cutting her leg. Neither of the sisters had ever married and had no children or grandchildren, no siblings, nieces or nephews to bequeath their family property. With Mary’s passing, so to passed the Borghini family in Lawrence County. Mary and Dora — and their mother — carved their own path, made their own rules, and kept the family farm intact for 76 years.

(Caddo Cemetery, Caddo, Lawrence County, Alabama, USA)  Excerpt:  (from The Moulton Advertiser July 23, 1913) A distressing accident occurred at Caddo, a few miles N E of our town, last Friday when a steam mill boiler exploded at Thrasher's Mill and hurled two lives into eternity… In this terrible ordeal we see 2 families bereaved. Gay Thrasher and Miss Dora Borghini have passed away — the former leaving a wife and several children, the latter an only sister, to mourn their irreparable loss.
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(from research done by Lisa Lentz) When their father, Salvatore Borghini died in 1872, Mary and Dora were left to tend over 400 acres of land, and a large herd of cattle. It is hard to imagine that in 1872 Mary Borghini at age 18 and Dora Borghini at age 14, could possibly handle the task of managing a farm, and yet people say that they could outride anyone on horseback, and that they worked their land and managed their cattle. Folks also say they “wore trousers like men” which was a terrific shock to the ladies in the community.

(Caddo Cemetery, Caddo, Lawrence County, Alabama, USA)  Excerpt:  (from research done by Lisa Lentz) In later years, Mary and Dora were best remembered for their grape wine which they made themselves and sold to people in the area. After Dora died in 1913, Mary lived by herself and when her leg got hurt and got infected, a neighbor sent for Dr. James Dyar, who tried to heal her. Despite the doctor's best efforts, Mary's diseased leg eventually ended her life.