Cambridge 'ghost story' really happened (IL)
Cambridge 'ghost story' really happened By DAVE CLARKE Of The Star Courier Updated: Thursday, March 9, 2006 9:30 AM CST We wonder sometimes what’s become of the world. The news seems to be filled with mass murders, domestic violence, suicide and other horrific crimes by people to other people and themselves. It really, however, is nothing new. In the fall of 1905 a series of gruesome incidents — all apparently unrelated — took place in and around Cambridge that had the rumor mill buzzing and people wondering what was going on. Last Halloween I found a number of “fright” sites on the Internet devoted to tales of horror and scary happenings. One of them dealt specifically with haunted places and ghost tales in Illinois including the story of “Dead Curve” near Cambridge which I turned into a Halloween column. According to the website story, a farmer living near Cambridge died from a bad cold in 1907. His wife, left with no income and a large family, went insane, lined their seven children up in the front yard, decapitated each one, then set fire to the house and shot herself in the head. The legend says that if you sit on the curve in the road where the house used to be at night, you will see a woman dressed in white (the farmer’s wife) at 10:27 p.m., the time she supposedly killed herself. At the time, I thought it made a great, scary Halloween tale but probably never happened. Those Internet sites are full of yarns that rattle your nerves and make you look under the bed at night, but most are made-up stuff. Then last fall while scanning through some old Star Couriers, I found a small news item on Nov. 15, 1905, about an ax hanging on the wall of the sheriff’s office in Cambridge which was attracting spectators. The ax, according to the story, was the one “used by Mrs. Clarence Markham several weeks ago when she murdered her seven children.” A bell went off in my mind. How many mothers in Cambridge ever killed their seven kids and there was only two years difference in the date — 1905 instead of 1907 on the quite possibly inaccurate Internet tale. There also was a name — Mrs. Clarence Markham. Given the time frame from the story of “several weeks ago,” I finally had a chance to spend some time at the Kewanee Public Library working my way backwards through the 1905 Star Couriers. What I found was not only the complete — and correct — story of the ax-murdering mom, but that it was the most bizarre in a series of tragic deaths which created quite a stir in the usually quiet county seat. According to the 1905 news accounts, between 11 a.m. and noon on the morning of Saturday, Sept. 30, 1905, Mrs. Markham was “thinking deeply over her troubles,” as she related in a suicide note found later — and decided to end it all, killing her seven children — ranging in age from 8 years to 4 months — with an ax. She then attempted to kill herself, slitting her throat with a a butcher knife, and hoping the fire she had set with kerosene would finish the job. Her husband did not have a bad cold and die, as the legend states. He was a local farmhand and not at home when his wife went on her rampage, according to the 1905 account. Mrs. Markham was rescued by neighbors who saw the smoke, but they were not able to save any of the children. The house burned to the ground. Mrs. Markham died three hours later, (not at 10:27 p.m. as the ghost story states), from her burns and slit throat, but not before giving a death-bed confession to the sheriff moments before she drew her last breath. “We had been eating watermelon,” she stated, “when I decided to end it all.” Mrs. Markham said she sent the two oldest children — Clara, 8, and Harry, 7 — who had been kept home from school by their father who was apparently worried about his wife’s mental state, out to the well for a bucket of water. While they were gone, she took each of the other five children — Charles, 6; Mary, 4; Lucy, 3; Eliza, 18 months; and Asie, 4 months — into a bedroom and (according to the account) slit their throats with an ax, although one story describes the instrument as “very dull,” which means she may have bludgeoned them to death. She then killed the two older children when they returned from the well and lined them all up on the bed. She then doused the room in kerosene and lit a match, then cut her own throat and waited to be consumed by the flames. In her note, found later by the mailman in the mailbox by the road addressed to her husband, Mrs. Markham said, “I will do this for my children” who will “all die happy in the arms of Jesus.” She planned to meet them “on the other side” and hoped her husband would join them later. There were only two caskets — one for Mrs. Markham, and one for the charred remains — all that was left of her seven children — which were placed in the “Cambridge cemetery.” As to the location of the ghost story’s “Dead Curve,” the 1905 news bulletin places the farm seven miles southwest of Cambridge and four miles southeast of Andover. Today, Mrs. Markham’s tragic story bears a remarkable similarity to that of Andrea Yates, the young Texas mother who 96 years later — on June 20, 2001 — methodically drowned her five children, ages 6 months to 7 years, in a bathtub. Nowadays, with the benefit of medicine and modern psychology, it was concluded that Yates suffered from a severe case of postpartum depression after giving birth to the fifth in a closely placed series of children. Mrs. Markham, who was described as “middle aged,” was declared “insane” at the inquest into the deaths. Yates’ husband has also been blamed for creating the conditions that drove his wife into the psychosis that caused her to kill her children because she was in an almost constant state of pregnancy. Mrs. Markham, likewise, found herself in the perpetual production of children and, after seven in eight years, finally snapped. Like Mrs. Markham, Andrea Yates also felt her children were better off in another place. Where the cases differ is that after killing her children, Mrs. Markham then tried to end her own life, whereas Yates called 9-1-1 and confessed to what she had just done. - By late October, things had settled down around Cambridge. An Oct. 25, 1905 story details the strange list of events which had befallen the community that fall and declared “Quiet settles again upon county seat.” It all began on the last Saturday in August when the local veterinarian, Dr. W.D. Powell, attempted unsuccessfully to shoot his wife and sister-in-law, but succeeded in then shooting himself in the head. The town was just getting over his death when a local attorney, J.V. Streed, was found behind his office with a bullet hole in his skull. His death was followed almost immediately by that of a “prominent young woman,” whose name was not given, who died suddenly in her home after hearing of Streed’s death. There were rumors of scandal, but no direct connection was ever divulged. While the Streed inquest was being conducted it was necessary to take a short recess so the coroner could investigate the death of John Tilman, 21, who killed himself with a shotgun. The next week an infant was found by a hunter in a box near the Edwards River one mile south of Cambridge. The murderer was never found. One of the saddest affairs was the burning to death of Charles Baugh, 16, who had filled a gasoline tank and, in the process, saturated his clothing. When he struck a match he literally went up in flames and died a painful two days later from the burns over most of his body. So much for the “good old days.” http://www.starcourier.com/articles/2006/03/09/local_news/local2.txt