re: Pictures from days gone by....

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The moon landing was in 1969, not 1968.

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In 1903 Frank Lloyd Wright designed a house for Edwin Cheney, a neighbor in Oak Park, IL and began having an affair with Cheney’s wife, Mamah. In 1909, Wright and Mamah left their respective spouses and moved to Italy.

Cheney granted his wife a divorce, but Wright’s wife refused. Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney returned to the US in October 1910 and Wright began working on a new home (which he named Taliesin (Welsh for “shining brow”) in Spring Green, WI.

Wright and Mamah moved into Taliesin in the winter of 1911, and Wright struggled to get clients due to the negative publicity for his affair.

In the spring of 1915, 31-year-old Julian Carlton and his wife Gertrude were hired as handyman and cook for the house, recommended by a friend of Wright’s. Over the course of the summer, Julian Carlton’s behavior became erratic and paranoid.

With dismissal imminent, Julian Carlton plotted to kill everyone at Taliesin. Wright was working in Chicago, but the house was full of other employees and Mamah and her 2 children.

On 15 August 1915, while the household was waiting for lunch, Carlton took an axe and attacked. He killed Mamah first and then her 11-year-old son John. 9-year-old Martha fled, but Carlton chased after her and killed her in the courtyard. Carlton then covered the bodies in gasoline and set them on fire.

He then poured gasoline near the dining room, where 6 people were gathered, setting fire to the house. Draftsman Herbert Fritz broke a window and escaped. Carlton then attacked the others, draftsman Emil Brodelle, foreman William Weston and his 13-year-old son Ernest, laborer Thomas Brunker and gardener David Lindblom. William Weston survived, while the others later died from their injuries.

Carlton then ran to the basement and swallowed acid.

William Weston alerted neighbors of the attack and fire, then returned to try and put out the blaze. He was able to save a number of Wright’s manuscripts and drawings.

Gertrude was found on the grounds of the house, unaware of what her husband had done. She was released from custody shortly after being questioned by police.

Carlton was found hours later, still alive. A mob attempted to lynch him as he was brought from the house, but he was taken by police to the county jail. He died 47 days later, after starving himself, before he could be tried for murder.

Wright traveled from Chicago with Edwin Cheney. Cheney took the bodies of his children back to Chicago, while Wright buried Mamah in an unmarked grave and held no funeral services for her, although he did pay for services for the others.

Wright suffered from severe depression after the incident, including insomnia, weight loss, and temporary blindness, which lasted for a few months.

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