Tag: Ernest Weston

Taliesin August 1914 after first fire

The tendrils of Taliesin’s 1914 fire

Posted on | by keiran
Reading Time: 5 minutes

The photo above shows Taliesin after the murders and fire there on August 15, 1914.

August for me in my small town in Wisconsin often includes remembering Taliesin’s 1914 fire.

Therefore, on this blog, you’ve seen my posts explaining the fire, and Mamah (and one with some snark). Plus, last year I posted statements that survivors Herbert Fritz and William Weston and Carlton’s wife, Gertrude, made to reporters.

Then, this past April I thought about the emotional impact on those close to victims, or who went through it.

So, that’s what I’ll write in this post:

Emil Brodelle

The Weekly Home News in Spring Green said he was 30 years old.

On Aug. 18, 1914, the Escanaba Daily Press in Michigan noted that Clarence Bootscher prepared to take Brodelle’s body back to his parents’ home in Milwaukee. Bootscher’s sister (also of Milwaukee; they didn’t give her name) was set to marry Brodelle. Clarence Bootscher told the Escanaba Press that,

My sister is prostrated…. It was all we could do to prevent her from coming up here. Emil was the most promising draftsman in Mr. Wright’s employ.

John and Martha Cheney

Their father, Edwin, took their remains back to his family in Oak Park, IL. 

But, before he left, a reporter at the Milwaukee Leader asked Cheney if he was planning to go to Mamah Borthwick’s funeral.

Cheney said, “That’s Wright’s affair…. I have two children who were murdered here.“

In 2008, I saw Nancy Horan as she came out to Taliesin for a special tour[pdf] with us surrounding Loving Frank.

I created the tour and had a nice time with her. 

Around that time, she said that someone told her that Edwin Cheney, who later worked in St. Louis, MO, kept an urn on his desk. Nancy thought the urn contained John and Martha’s ashes.

Nancy also said Edwin and his second wife Elsie Millor (they married in 1912) adopted two children after 1914. 

[The Wikipedia page on Edwin says they adopted three children; perhaps Mamah’s niece, Jessie (who lived with them almost from birth), was one of the three].

Brunker and Lindblom:

I couldn’t find a lot of info on Thomas Brunker or David Lindblom.

Although the Weekly Home News of Spring Green wrote about the murders in their August 20 edition and I trust them the most because they were (are) the local paper. Brunker was the hostler (he dealt with the horses); and Lindblom was Taliesin’s gardener.

In addition, I learned in the Aug. 19 issue of the Evening Times-Republican (of Marshalltown, IA) that Lindblom was 55 and Brunker was 60. The Evening Times-Republican also informed me that Brunker (from Ridgeway) had 10 children who had lost their mother 4 years before.

Thomas Brunker was buried near the Catholic church in his town.

The “Home News” added in their August 20 edition that:

The funeral of David Lindblom was held Tuesday afternoon (the 18th) and internment was made in the cemetery at Unity Chapel…. Lindblom was born in Sweden and had no relatives in the United States except one sister, residing in Chicago, who could not be located.

I haven’t found Lindblom’s grave at Unity Chapel’s cemetery.

Ernest Weston:

The family buried Ernest in the Spring Green cemetery. His father, William, didn’t go to the funeral because he stayed at home convalescing from his injuries. 

William Weston:

He may have been suffering psychologically, because the Home News reported almost a year later that he unexpectedly left Spring Green, and turned up in Minnesota. He returned to his family, but the newspaper reported 5 months after that (Nov. 11, 1915), that he had just come home from the Dakotas where he had been working. Perhaps these moves from Spring Green were related to William Weston needing to forget the violence he witnessed and the loss of his son.

However, if Weston left for that reason, it seemed to have worked because the Home News didn’t report any other disappearances by him. 

Herbert Fritz:

While writing her biography on Wright, Meryle Secrest talked to Herb Fritz, Jr. about Wright, Taliesin, and the 1914 fire. Fritz said,

My father never talked about what he saw happening. I think he had emotional problems, but he would just stand and stare off into space.1

Gertrude Carlton:

She escaped Taliesin at the beginning of her husband’s rampage and the police picked her up as she walked to Spring Green. 

The Iowa county police in Dodgeville held her to determine what connection she had to the murders. They concluded she had nothing to do with them and let her go. So, on August 29, she left Dodgeville on the train.2 From there, she disappeared.

Wright:

He responded in a few ways. First, he refused to see his family:

A horrible loneliness began to clutch me, but I longed for no one I ever loved or that I had ever known…. My children—I had welcomed them always—but I did not want them now. They had been so faithfully kind in my extremity. I shall never forget.

 But strange faces were best and I walked among them.3

Then, he writes further about his life with her: “I could see forward but I could not see backward.“3

Additionally, he wrote that he did not “turn back” or stop “to mourn”, but tucked memories with Mamah away for “years to come”. And that it was as if Mamah hadn’t “really lived at all.”

Therefore,

Wright appears to have suffered from “Complicated grieving”, which can occur following violent death.4

For this reason, complicated grieving can also explain his decision to embark on a romantic relationship with Miriam Noel soon after meeting her in late 1914.

Moreover, when he worked on the Imperial Hotel, Wright, 

… wanted to get away from the United States. I still imagined one might “get away” from himself. In spite of all my reasoning power and returning balance I was continually expecting some terrible blow to strike. 5

Wright’s son, John:

was with his father when he found about the fire and rode the train with him to Spring Green.

One chapter in his book, My Father, Frank Lloyd Wright,6 is “REFLECTION”. There he wrote his thoughts on his father and Mamah’s relationship, and how he changed after her murder:

Something in him died with her, a something lovable and gentle that I knew and loved in my father. As I reflect now I am convinced that the love that united them was deep, sincere and holy in spite of its illegality—I am convinced that the woman for whom he left home was of noble character.

John’s observations go deeper and I think they need to be included here:

Through the years they lived their life together Dad was free to express his love and attention to his children. After the tragedy it was not so. Up to that time he lived life fully. After that time he seemed to have no protection domestically whatsoever, reveling in an intoxication of freedom he could never know. He was wide open for anything that might come his way, restless, frustrated. He seemed to be making an effort to live in the varying and shifting scenes of his domestic life, but a self-forcing, so to speak—trying always to make it what he would like to have it through showmanship and penmanship. Only architecturally was he able to hold his own.7

 

 

Published August 4, 2025.

A.S. Rockwell took the photograph at the top of this post on the day of, or the day after, the fire. The photograph is on Wikimedia Commons and is in the public domain.  See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Taliesin_After_Fire.jpg for information about the origin of the photograph.

Notes:

1. Meryl Secrest. Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1992), 400.

2. Ron McCrea, Building Taliesin: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home of Love and Loss (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 2012), 196.

3. Frank Lloyd Wright. An Autobiography (Longmans, Green and Company, London, New York, Toronto, 1932), 191.

4. The violence can be actual, criminal violence, or through accident or suicide. Complicated grief in those bereaved by violent death: the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on complicated grief, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3384450/ The information about complicated grief is part of the research I undertook while exploring the nightmare for loved ones that must have occurred after the murders. 

5. An Autobiography, 194.

6. John Lloyd Wright. My Father, Frank Lloyd Wright (originally published as My Father Who is on Earth, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946; Dover Publications, Inc., New York; 1992). I’ve quoted from John’s book in my post about Taliesin’s first fire, and in “How Did Frank Lloyd Wright Feel About Christmas?“

7. My Father, Frank Lloyd Wright, 85.

Also, you can read my essay, “We lived–Richly” (about Mamah’s grave), from the April 2025 issue of Madison magazine.

And if you live near Prairie du Sac, I’m giving my “Myths of the 1914 Fire” lecture on August 21 at the Ruth Culver Community Library.

Taliesin August 1914 after first fire

Statements after the murders at Taliesin in 1914

Posted on | by keiran
Reading Time: 6 minutes

August 15, this coming Thursday, marks 110 years since 7 people were inexplicably murdered at Frank Lloyd Wright’s home, Taliesin, by his servant, Julian Carlton.

I’ve written about it a couple of times1 and had not planned on writing anything today.

But I’ve gathered a lot of information over the years and,

in the spirit of “preservation by distribution“,

I decided to put up a post with the statements by the survivors, or related parties, that appeared in the newspapers.

I think this is kosher, since I’m publishing news that was written 110 years ago.

Just so you know, sometimes the stories spell Julian’s last name as “Carleton” and I decided to keep those misspellings without correcting them (writing “[sic]” after each misspelling gets distracting). Additionally, one story refers to Wright’s partner, Mamah Borthwick, as “Mrs. Borthwick”.

Those statements are below:

Herbert Fritz’s narrative of what happened

He was one of Wright’s draftsmen. He survived by jumping out of a window when he noticed the fire, but before Carlton could attack. As a result of his relative lack of injuries (he broke his arm), Fritz gave the most complete description of what happened.

This first appeared in the The Chicago Daily Tribune on August 16, 1914:

Story of Survivor.

“I was eating in the small dining room off the kitchen with the other men,” said Fritz. “The room, I should say, was about 12 x 12 feet in size. There were two doors, one leading to the kitchen and the other opening into the court. We had just been served by Carleton and he had left the room when we noticed something flowing under the screen door from the court. We thought it was nothing but soap suds spilled outside.

“The liquid ran under my chair and I noticed the odor of gasoline. Just as I was about to remark the fact a streak of flame shot under my chair, and it looked like the whole side of the room was on fire. All of us jumped up, and I first noticed that my clothing was on fire. The window was nearer to me than the other door and so I jumped through it, intending to run down the hill to the creek and roll in it.

“It may be that the other door was locked. I don’t know. I didn’t think to try it. My first thought was to save myself. The window was only about a half a foot from the floor and three feet wide and it was the quickest way out.

Arm Broken by Fall.

“I plunged through and landed on the rocks outside. My arm was broken by the fall and the flames had eaten through my clothing and were burning me. I rolled over and over down the hill toward the creek, but stopped about half way. The fire on my clothes was out by that time and I scrambled to my feet and was about

Cont’d, p. 6 column 1

to start back up the hill when I saw Carleton come running around the house with the hatchet in his hand and strike Brodelle, who had followed me through the window.

“Then I saw Carleton run back around the house, and I followed in time to see him striking at the others as they came through the door into the court. He evidently had expected us to come out that way first and was waiting there, but ran around to the side in which the window was located when he saw me and Brodelle jump out.

“I didn’t see which way Carlton went. My arm was paining me, and I was suffering terribly from the burns, and I supposed I must have lost consciousness for a few moments. I remember staggering around the corner of the house and seeing Carleton striking at the other men as they came through the door, and when I looked again the negro was gone.”

Statement by William Weston in The Detroit Tribune on August 16:

Weston was Wright’s carpenter. He followed Fritz and another victim, Emil Brodelle, out of the window. Carlton gave him a glancing blow, so he survived. However, Carlton did murder Weston’s 13-year-old son Ernest. Ernest and two others (David Lindblom and Thomas Brunker) were attacked exiting through the door on the opposite side of the room:

“As each one put his head out,” said Weston, “the negro struck, killing or stunning his victim. I was the last. The ax struck me in the neck and knocked me down and I guess he thought he had me, because he ran back to the window and I got up and ran. When I looked back, the negro had disappeared.[“]

Unfortunately, that’s it. Although he was probably not able to talk since his son died later on the 15th.

Gertrude Carlton quoted in the Escanaba Daily Press on August 18:

Authorities found Gertrude Carlton, Julian Carlton’s wife, walking on the road into the village of Spring Green. She was taken to Dodgeville (the county seat) and found innocent of any involvement in the crime. Two weeks later, she was allowed to leave, then took a train to Chicago and was never heard from again.

“I don’t know why Julian did it,” she said. “He must have been crazy. I think he was. He had just served dinner, and I saw him cleaning a white rug in a pan of gasoline out in the courtway. He had his pipe in his mouth, and I saw him light a match.

            “The next thing I knew the kitchen was in flames, and I saw Julian running toward the barn with a hatchet in his hand. I ran downstairs to the cellar and climbed from a window.”

The woman was arrested while walking on the road to town. She said her husband had been moody and “acting queer” of late.

            “I woke up several times at night and found him sitting up,” she declared. “I would ask him what was the matter and he would say that workmen around the place were trying to ‘do’ him. That was why he made me tell Mrs. Borthwick we would leave Saturday because it was lonely for me in the country.”

Wright was in Chicago,

finishing up his Midway Gardens commission when he found out about the fire. Here’s the Chicago Tribune again on Aug. 16:

Tells of Crime.

Mr. Wright was notified of the tragedy at his office in the Orchestra building by long distance telephone.

Mr. Wright almost collapsed when the news first reached him. He got the tragic long distance telephone message while at Midway Gardens, the new south side amusement park, which he designed.

“This is Frank Roth at Madison,” came a voice over the wire. “Be prepared for a shock. Your wife—that is, Mrs. Cheney—the two children, and one of your draftsmen have been killed by Carleton.

“Carleton set fire to the bungalow and got away. He must have gone crazy. A posse is chasing him. You’d better get to Spring Green right away.”

Roth, from whom the message came, is a friend of the architect.

Subsequently Wright received a telegram from Spring Lake signed with the initials of Mrs. Cheney—of Mamah Borthwick, or as she now calls herself

“Come as fast as possible; serious trouble,” was her message.

“Frank Roth” is an unknown person and no one has found the telegram. “Spring Lake” is wrong. It should be Spring Green.

Here’s the Chicago Tribune on Wright’s statements before he came back to Wisconsin on the train with his son, John:

Unable to Talk Coherently.

The architect was so distraught he could not tell a coherent story to the detectives.

“The Carletons, Julian and his wife, were the best servants I have ever seen,” he said. “The wife cooked and Julian was a general handyman. They were Cuban negroes, and Julian especially seemed to have an intelligence above the average and a good education for one of his class.

“They had not been engaged permanently and were to have quit our employ today. Julian was to have started for Chicago on the 7:45 train this morning. The train would have reached the city shortly after 1 o’clock, and he was to have visited my office to get his wages.

“Three days ago, when I last saw him, he seemed perfectly normal. He must have lost his mind—and yet I cannot believe that the news is true. The fact that the telegram was signed M.B.B. was received after the alleged murders buoys my hopes.”

Paul Hendrickson did some good work to show that Julian Carlton was not from Cuba or Barbados, which was repeated in other newspaper stories at that time. In his book, Plagued by Fire, Hendrickson makes the case that Carlton was from Alabama.

First published August 13, 2024.
A.S. Rockwell took the photograph at the top of this post on the day of, or the day after, the fire. The photograph in on Wikimedia Commons and is in the public domain. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Taliesin_After_Fire.jpg for information about the origin of the photograph.

Note:

1. if only to tell you that Carlton didn’t serve his victims soup!