Judge Abraham Bordon was born in Russia (now Piater, Ukraine) on October 7, 1891. His family emigrated to the United States in 1898 and settled in Hartford. He graduated from Hartford Public High School in 1910 and entered a four-year law program at Cornell University.
Bordon was elected to the Hartford Board of Aldermen in 1916 and re-elected in 1918. He served as the first Jewish secretary to Hartford Mayor Kinsella in 1922. He was also active in supporting and building the Jewish community: helping found Mt. Sinai Hospital, raising money to assist European Jews during World War II and helping merge the Jewish Community Council and Welfare fund to create the Greater Hartford Jewish Federation, of which he was president from 1962-1963.
Bordon practiced Law with Abraham Ribicoff from 1933 and turned over the practice to the future Governor in 1941. Named to the Connecticut Court of Common Pleas in 1931 by Governor Wilbur Cross, Bordon was the first Jewish judge in Hartford. When he was elevated to the Superior Court in 1949, he was the third Jew to serve in Connecticut’s upper courts. Bordon was appointed to the State Supreme Court in 1961 but was forced to retire the same year when he turned 70. After that he served as a Judicial Trial Referee.
Bordon excelled at arbitration between parties and achieved renown as the “settling judge”; able to dispose of about three times more cases per year than most judges could hear. He was known to be stern but kindly. Judge Bordon once refused to sentence two juveniles because the parents were not present, insisting that the adults must assume responsibility for the acts of their children. His vehemence was such that the Legislature eventually enacted a law requiring this.
In 1916 he married Mindel Harris with whom he had two daughters: Nancy and Anne. Abraham Bordon died on August 7, 1981, at the age of 89.