Tragic Details About Frank Lloyd Wright

On August 15, 1914, Frank Lloyd Wright's mistress Mamah Cheney, her two children, and six others (Wright's employees, as well as an employee's son) were attacked with an ax wielded by Wright's handyman, Julian Carlton, while staying at Wright's Wisconsin estate of Taliesin, writes Crime Museum.

Cheney, her children John and Martha, and four others were either killed or died of their wounds. Only two employees, William Weston and Herbert Fritz, survived, writes World History Project. The only known photograph of Cheney was published after her death, according to Wisconsin History. Carlton also set the property on fire, and he later died in custody (via the Independent). 

After the dust had settled, Wright wrote of the fire in his autobiography, "Frank Lloyd Wright": "So the rage that grew in me when I felt the inimical weight of human censure concentrated upon me began to fade away until I finally found refuge in the idea that Taliesin should live to show something more for its mortal sacrifices than a charred and terrible ruin on a lonely hillside in the lovely ancestral Valley where great happiness had been." Carefully, clearly thinking of the happier past rather than the future, Wright began to rebuild his estate. But the property also burned again in 1925 after an electrical fire, and it was ultimately rebuilt twice, according to Taliesin Preservation.

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