Wright’s Greatest Heartbreak
By 1914, Mamah settled in at Taliesin while Wright was in Chicago working on the Midway Gardens project in Chicago. On August 15, 1914, Mamah, her two children visiting from Chicago, were having lunch on the dining area porch. Several Taliesin workers and draftspeople were enjoying their lunch in the dining area. While everyone was eating, Julien Carleton, one of Taliesin’s servants, locked the exits. The workers did not know Carleton had just killed Mamah and her children with a hatchet. He then poured gasoline around the outside and lit it on fire. Carlson struck those who escaped the flames with a hatchet. Seven people died in the homicide. It viscerally devastated Wright. He boarded a train at once to Taliesin – sharing a car with Mamah’s ex-husband. In a memoir of his father, Wright’s son John wrote, “Something in hm died with her, something loveable and gentle.”