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| Street festival in Cambridge, Illinois, circa 1907 (colorized postcard) |
On January 13, 1907, the Sunday
Record-Herald devoted its entire front page to the mystery everyone was
talking about—the Cambridge Curse. They said, “Henry County, Illinois,
suffers from an epidemic of murder and suicide unequaled in any rural community
in this country.”
The paper reported that the city had
become so accustomed to the “carnival of crime” that “a murder now is not more
than a two-day wonder in Cambridge. We constantly wonder what will happen
next.”
Things had gotten so bad that people were
overheard asking each other...
“Who next?” “What next?”
And history was on their side. Over the
past three years, Henry County had experienced ten murders, five suicides, two
attempted suicides, and a bank robbery—statistics totally out of whack for a
community of 1500.
What surprised the reporter even more was
that the authorities could find no connection between the murders and suicides.
They just happened. Finally, the paper concluded that it was nothing more than
a “gruesome and unfortunate coincidence.”
Still, the reports were alarming...
Death
of the Swedish Servant Girl
In Mount Carmel, Illinois, the Daily
Republican-Register taunted readers with stories about “the Curse of
Cambridge.” Supposedly, it dated back to the death of a friendless Swedish
servant girl who died there around the turn of the century. Rumor had it her
death was hushed up. Then she was buried before an inquest could be held.
The Cairo Bulletin reported,
“there is much wagging of heads and whispering over the curse upon this
locality.” Like the other papers, they linked the curse to the death of the
Swedish servant girl, filling in a few more details. They suggested she was the
victim of “evil passions” and died under “mysterious circumstances,” then
hinted several prominent Cambridge businessmen covered up the murder. The paper
told readers the girl died in agony. But strangely, no one could recall her
name, the exact date, or how she died. However, the lack of details leads one
to believe the girl’s story was more the work of an overactive imagination than
anything based on fact.
But that didn’t stop the paper from saying
the servant girl’s mutilated body rested in an unmarked grave with her blood
crying out for revenge. The Decatur Daily Review said, “It is
commonly accepted as a fact that she was virtually murdered.”
That might be so, but a search through
area newspapers from the turn of the century comes up blank. There’s no mention
of a servant girl dying in Cambridge. Not a hint of scandal or suspicious
death. So, if a servant girl died there, she’s lost to history and will most
likely remain so.
Dr.
William D. Powell
Doc Powell was a
veterinary surgeon with a personality better suited to animals than people. He
was gruff, unfriendly, a bit of a bully, and reportedly couldn’t take or
understand a joke.
For example, the Sunday
Record-Herald told a story about when a practical joker covered a post in Doc’s yard with tar and
feathers. Powell misinterpreted it and took it as a sign his enemies were
lurking about, trying to drive him out of town. From that day forward, he
carried a revolver.
The paper explained Powell’s reaction,
saying he “couldn’t see a joke after it had been diagramed for him.”
Apparently, his wife wasn’t impressed by
his lack of humor, either. She left him in April and went to live with her
sister in Cambridge.
Powell got along on his own for several
months before seeking closure. Then, finally, he visited his sister-in-law’s
house just after the family sat down to supper on August 26, 1905, pulled out a
revolver, and let loose. The first shot took off his wife’s little finger.
Luna Powell jumped up and hid in a nearby
closet. Powell fired another round through the door, then walked out to the
back porch and put the gun to his head. No one knows whether he meant to kill
her or throw a scare into her.
Shortly after his death, Powell’s brother,
Dr. Byrd C. Powell, claimed Powell had uncovered evidence in the death of a
Swedish domestic who died several years back. It
implicated several prominent business people in her death.
He said his brother tried
to share the information with the authorities. However, when they failed to
investigate the matter, Doc contacted John V. Streed, a local attorney. Streed
refused to prosecute the case because he was friends with several of the men.
Now both men were dead, and Powell’s
research was missing.
No one knew for sure what information
Powell’s investigation had uncovered. However, the Chicago Tribune
hinted he had the goods on a prominent dry goods merchant whose dalliances got
his Swedish servant girl pregnant. Perhaps she died during childbirth or while
undergoing a back-alley abortion. Unfortunately, the paper wasn’t clear on the
details, so the reasons for her demise are left to our imaginations.
The only certainty is that Doc Powell went
to his sister-in-law’s house to scare or murder his wife. But, failing that, he
turned the gun on himself. Whatever the circumstances of his death, no one
mourned too much. Cambridge had one less bully after his passing.
The real shocker came a week after Doc
Powell killed himself when Attorney John V. Streed died under mysterious
circumstances.
John V.
Streed
Arthur J. Crawford, the owner of the
Central Meat Market, found John V. Streed lying outside the door of an outhouse
in the yard behind his law office at about 5:30 a.m. on September 26, 1905.
Streed was still alive, but his breathing was labored and heavy. Dr. J. E.
Westerlund and A. E. Swain helped carry Streed to his rooms above the Cambridge
Chronicle’s office. However, he died a short time later.
A .32 caliber hammerless Smith and Wesson
revolver was found by the body. There were five shots in the chamber. The
sixth, it was assumed, was fired into Streed’s head, leading investigators to
think he committed suicide. A handkerchief lay in a pool of blood near his
head.
John V. Streed (Moline Dispatch. September 29, 1905)
Streed was last seen at around 11 p.m. the previous evening. He’d visited Alpha earlier in the day to attend a trial. That night, he rented a rig from the livery stable at 10 p.m. and returned it an hour later. The liveryman said Streed seemed normal. He was smiling and happy, not suicidal, making murder seem more likely.
An investigation found that Streed was
dressed in the same clothes he wore to Alpha, and his bed was not slept in. In
addition, the lights were left on in the front and back rooms of his living
quarters, and he had been reading letters just before the shooting.
The way the body was found, with the
weapon on the ground beside it, made it look like suicide, but... The direction
of the wound made little sense. People can’t shoot themselves in the back of
the head. So, the wound’s location made it nearly impossible to believe Streed
shot himself.
Doctors Westerlund and Kirkland held an
autopsy later that afternoon. They found the bullet had penetrated deep into
Streed’s skull, lodging behind the left eye. The doctors put the time of the
shooting between midnight and 3 a.m. That coincided with a statement by Henry
White, the cashier of the First National Bank, who told police a gunshot roused
him from his sleep at around 3 a.m. However, he heard nothing else and dropped
back to sleep.
John V. Streed was the exact opposite of
Doc Powell. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1890, spoke several
languages, including Swedish, German, and French, and joined every group in
town, including the Masons, the Odd Fellows, and the Knights of the Globe. But
unlike Doc Powell, people enjoyed Streed’s company. As a result, he mixed well
in all levels of Cambridge society.
The authorities thought it was unlikely
Streed had any enemies. Except... One source said the Masonic Lodge had
recently blackballed Doc Powell, and Streed was behind it.
But Powell had died a week before Streed,
so he couldn’t have been involved in his murder. Unless—some friends of his
took revenge on Streed.
Whatever happened, it made little sense to
blame Doc Powell or connect the two deaths.
At the inquest, it came out the bullet
traveled clear through Streed’s brain, breaking into two pieces. The larger
portion lodged near his temple. The smaller part was found in the skin near
where the bullet entered the body.
States Attorney Charles Sturtz of Kewanee
believed the evidence proved that Streed had been murdered. He gave several
reasons, including the weight of the bullet that killed Streed did not match
the weight of the bullets in the gun found by his body. The shell that killed
him weighed 100.5 grains, and the bullets in the gun weighed 85 grains. In
addition, he felt the handkerchief found near Streed’s head wasn’t his, meaning
it was left by the killer.
Another view of downtown Cambridge, Illinois, circa 1909. (vintage postcard)
However, Deputy Sheriff Ed Swayne was at odds with the doctors and the state’s attorney. The same evidence convinced him that Streed had killed himself.
Add to that, the verdict of the coroner’s
jury was less than helpful. It determined that Streed died from a wound fired
by an unknown assailant. Nothing more.
Sturtz didn’t see any chance of it ever
coming to trial, although he could picture the details in his mind:
Streed returned home about midnight. He
read his mail but was likely interrupted. Three lights were lit in the house,
and two chairs sat at each end of the table, leading investigators to think he
had a visitor.
“Suppose this visitor made threats against
Streed,” continued Sturtz. “The attorney naturally would take occasion to put a
weapon in his pocket.”
They went outside, near the outhouse. “As
Streed stooped to unlock the door, his assailant gave some unconscious warning,
and Streed pulled his revolver too late. The bullet in Streed’s skull stopped
him, but he might still have discharged his weapon.”
The murderer tried to drag the body into
the outhouse when it was over, but couldn’t. He got some blood on himself,
wiped it with his handkerchief, then carelessly let it fall to the ground.
Finally, to make it look like suicide, the killer dropped the revolver by
Streed’s body.
It was one theory explaining what
happened. However, Sturtz lacked evidence and a suspect.
There was also some talk that Streed
killed himself because of financial difficulties. A quick check of his assets
found that he had less than $30 in the bank. However, Mrs. Streed shot that
idea down. She had plenty of money in her accounts to cover any bills that
might have come up. Besides, Streed had several wealthy relatives who would
have loaned him all the money he needed.
After saying that, Mrs. Streed showed the
coroner’s jury a letter that her husband received on September 5. He had been
offered $10,000 to “run down a story concerning prominent people of Cambridge.”
The understanding was that he would be killed if he divulged details of the
investigation. But unfortunately, she refused to disclose who wrote the letter,
saying it wouldn’t further the investigation.
Another theory suggested that Chicago gang
members killed Streed. Several years back, he had defended “Army” Sullivan for
robbing a farmer on a Cottage Grove Avenue streetcar.
While defending Sullivan, Streed became
familiar with the gang’s meeting places, passwords, and symbols. Afterward,
gang members warned Streed that he would pay with his life if he squealed.
Then, perhaps, they decided he knew too much and—killed him.
Streed wrote a letter to his wife on
September 3, saying he feared someone was trying to kill him but never mailed
it. The letter was found in a pile of correspondence on his desk.
Mrs. Streed wasn’t surprised by that
revelation. “Just before I left for Pennsylvania,” she said, “I met a
suspicious-looking man in front of the post office. He was short and bent
nearly double over something he held in his hands. I was afraid to leave my
husband, but he reassured me and insisted that I go to my mother, who was
thought to be dying.”
Whatever happened to her husband, Mrs.
Streed was convinced the killer wasn’t one of the Orion bank robbers. She
thought she knew who the killer was, but would not say it aloud. The coroner
was the only one who would learn her secret.
Two weeks before his death, Streed told
his cousin, J. E. Peterson of Orion, that he had been threatened but refused to
name names.
Those revelations made murder seem more
likely.
The only blemish on Streed’s past was a
supposed blackmail scheme run on him by Nannie Calhoun, a former schoolteacher.
Although Nannie’s sister said it had happened just the opposite way. She
insisted Streed tried to blackmail her sister, not the other way around. That
happened ten years back.
Supposedly, Nannie Calhoun flooded the
area with unsigned letters, accusing Streed of some indiscretion. Streed
invited her to his house and then tricked her into confessing. He had three
witnesses in another room who heard the entire conversation.
“He led her on until she broke down and
confessed all,” said an unnamed source privy to the conversation. “And then, in
a fit of rage, declared that she or her friends would murder him if he ever
made her confession public.”
Afterward, Nannie threatened to kill him.
Streed’s friends said an attempt was made
on his life. He convinced the woman to leave town rather than face a lengthy
trial. She moved to Colorado, married, and within two months killed herself.
Her husband quickly followed her, committing suicide a month later.
However, the story about Nannie Calhoun,
like the one about the servant girl, might be just that. The society column in
the Cambridge Chronicle reported Nannie returned home in June 1896 after
spending several months in Grand Junction, Colorado. S he did not move there or
commit suicide, as earlier articles suggested. That puts the story of her
blackmail attempts in doubt as well.
Several months after Streed’s death, the
verdict was still out on whether he was murdered or had committed suicide.
Streed’s relatives remained suspicious.
They didn’t believe he had killed himself, so they hired the Pinkerton
Detective Agency to investigate his death. In late October, Detective Schaeffer
of the Pinkerton Agency announced: “There is not the slightest shadow of doubt
on God’s green earth that John V. Streed was murdered. No other theory could
account for his death.” That may be the case, but Schaeffer didn’t produce any
evidence or suspects to support his accusations, so it was nothing more than a
detective’s intuition.
Mattie
Chilberg
Mattie Chilberg is little more than a
sidebar in the story of the Cambridge Curse. The day after Streed’s body was
found, she dropped dead in her father’s home. People tried to connect the two
incidents because the deaths occurred so close together, saying she died from
heart failure, brought on by the shock of Streed’s death. However, there’s no
evidence to link the two events.
Mattie’s father was the Cambridge
postmaster, and the post office was just below Streed’s office and rooms. The
two families were friends, but there’s nothing to link Mattie and Streed
romantically. But that didn’t stop the papers from suggesting it—writing that
Mattie collapsed after hearing the news.
Mattie was lying on the couch, said her
father. Then she jumped up and threw her hands in the air. “Goodbye, Mama.
Goodbye, Papa,” she said. “I am going.” And then she fell to the floor, dead.
It might have been the Cambridge Curse,
but more likely, Mattie Chilberg died from heart problems unrelated to Streed’s
death.
Julia
Markham
Life doesn’t always work out the way you
expect. Julia Johnson was a happy-go-lucky girl. Things just seemed to go her
way. But then, in her early twenties, Julia married Clarence Markham, a man
thirteen years her senior. And life wasn’t so easy any longer.
They rented the Alfred Johnston farm,
about seven miles outside Cambridge. Clarence grew vegetables to feed his
family and was gone most of the day, working as day labor at nearby farms.
They had seven children, one after the
other.
After the kids came along, something
inside Julia snapped. She became somewhat of a loner, preferring quiet time at
home. So, her husband took responsibility for the kids, taking them to events
whenever the community threw a dance or party while Julia stayed home.
Clarence’s father, Horace Markham, visited
the family in July. Right away, he sensed something was off with Julia. He
couldn’t put a finger on it, but thought the “drudgery and monotony” of her
life was driving her crazy so that it was “hardly worth living.”
On September 30, 1905, neighbors spotted
smoke pouring out of the Markham home early in the day. Julia ran out the door
just as they reached the gate.
“Her clothing was on fire, and her arms,
hands, and body already were charred as she staggered into the yard.”
Clarence arrived just after his wife
emerged from the inferno. He tried to rescue the children, but the neighbors
held him back.
They found the children burned to a crisp
on the bed after the fire.
Bystanders carried Julia to a neighboring
house and did what they could to comfort her. Dr. Clanahan stitched the wounds
in Julia’s throat, but it was apparent she was going to die.
When Julia came to, she said an intruder
tied her up and murdered her children in front of her.
“I was attacked by a large man,” she said.
“He wore a black hat and had a black mustache. He killed my seven children with
an ax, smashing their heads in, one by one. Their cries meant nothing to him.
My little ones! My children!”
Sheriff Steirs didn’t believe any of it.
“That won’t do,” he said, shaking his head. “Tell it straight!”
Julia thought it over, then asked, “What
will you do if I tell all?”
“It won’t make any difference,” said the
sheriff. “You’ll be dead in a few hours.”
And then, when she knew she would die,
Julia changed her story.
It all started at breakfast. Julia was
eating a watermelon with the kids. She sent the two older kids, Clara and
Henry, to the well for a bucket of water. She killed her other five kids with
an ax while they were gone.
“I killed the children,” she said. “I
called them into the house one at a time and cut their throats with an ax.
“Then I laid them in a row on the bed,
covered them with kerosene, and set them on fire.
“I tried to cut my own throat with the ax,
too,” she explained, “but failed. So, I used the butcher knife.” The same one
she used to cut the watermelon at breakfast.
“I wanted to lie by the children on the
bed, but it was already burning, and I couldn’t die. So, I tried to run
away.
“This is the truth. I killed the children
to save them.”
A few moments later, Julia Markham was
dead. What she meant by “I killed the children to save them” remains a mystery.
She repeated it in a suicide note she left in a neighbor’s mailbox.
The note was short, sweet, and unsigned:
“Dear Clarence: This is
to say goodbye to you. Some give their souls for others, and I will do this for
my children. God bless them! They will all die happy in the arms of Jesus. I
will meet them there, and someday, you will join us, too.”
Other than that, she assured her husband
that she loved him, but... “she believed ‘they would all be better off and
safer in the arms of the Lord than on earth.’”
Newspapers around the state reported that
Clarence couldn’t live with the news. So, he put a gun to his head and sent a
bullet speeding through his brain. Before pulling the trigger, Clarence tied a
rope around his neck. The rope would ensure he got the job done if the bullet
failed.
And then, the next day, they were forced
to issue a retraction. Clarence Markham hadn’t committed suicide. It was just a
rumor spread by gossip mongers.
Clarence eventually remarried. He lived to
the ripe old age of 77, passing away in 1951.
Mary
Anderson
When you’re wealthy, you can get away with
murder. And Henry Anderson might have pulled it off.
Anderson, 36, was one of the wealthiest
men in Henry County. He inherited property worth $40,000 (equivalent to $1.3
million today). Then he moved to Cambridge, married, and built a home shortly
afterward.
The Andersons went to bed at about 10 p.m.
on Saturday, December 29, 1906, with the baby asleep between them. At about 1
a.m. Mary Anderson screamed, “Oh, Henry!”
Mary Anderson was sound asleep with her
husband, Henry, and her nine-month-old child when she was shot to death. At
first, the police thought the robbery was the motive, but things didn’t add up.
Henry Anderson was “crazed by the killing” and was considered “too irrational
to give a correct story.” A pocketbook containing $17 was missing. Another one
containing $105 was untouched under the man’s pillow, as were several hundred
dollars’ worth of jewelry sitting in plain sight.
Henry told the authorities that he awoke
with a start and saw two men running toward the door. He might have heard a gunshot,
but wasn’t sure.
He ran downstairs to the telephone, but
the line was dead, so he went to Charles Larson’s house next door.
When the neighbors arrived, they found the
kitchen door open and Henry was half-mad. His story was garbled and incoherent.
Reporters later explained that the incident had “unhinged” him.
Sheriff Swain found Henry screaming,
“Mary!” “Mary!”
Swain and Deputy George W. Brown found
Mary Anderson dead in her bed, blood dripping from a bullet hole in her left
temple. The gun had been held so close it left powder burns on her face. The
baby lay beside her, crying.
Further investigation found the lock was
broken on one window. In addition, the phone line had been cut, explaining why
Henry couldn’t call out.
The papers tried to make sense of what
happened.
“It would have been very difficult, with
the interurban and the farmer’s telephones and other modern means of
communication in the country, for the murderer to have escaped from Cambridge
and the community without detection,” reported The Sunday
Record-Herald.
“There are no ratholes in which
stinking criminals may hide in the country, as there are in the city. It is not
unlikely that the mysterious Anderson murder was the crime of some youth living
in or near Cambridge.
Robbery probably was
the motive. And yet this theory is acceptable only because it presents more
promising lines for investigation than any other theory. It may be knocked into
a cocked hat at any point in the work of unraveling the crime.”
One suspect bantered about was Henry’s
brother, John Anderson. He had been arrested for forgery and locked up in the
county jail. And then he escaped.
Supposedly, his sister slipped saw blades
into the jail, and he used them to cut the bars. Detectives followed him to
Canada and brought him back, but he escaped again and hadn’t been seen since.
When his father died, John Anderson
received a pittance. The bulk of the estate went to Henry. Henry paid off his
brother’s debts. He gave a little help to John’s wife and children, but not
enough to keep them out of poverty.
After the murder, there was talk that John
was seen lurking about the town. Perhaps he intended to get some money from his
brother. Things went wrong, and Mary Anderson got in the way of the bullet
meant for Henry. Stranger things had happened.
But more likely, Henry Anderson killed his
wife. Whether the intruder was John Anderson or someone else, it seems
improbable that they would have shot Mary Anderson, then let her husband live.
After all, the killer held the gun just inches from Mary’s face and not more
than a foot from Henry.
The papers don’t say it, but the police
must have thought it. This guy knocked off his wife and made it look like a
robbery. That would explain why detectives couldn’t find any trace of the
killer. He was in front of them all the time.
Suicides
And then, there were several suicides.
Some were successful. Some not so successful.
Albert Rosene, a well-to-do farmer living
in Weller Township, hung himself on November 3, 1905. His brother, Harry, said
they went out to milk the cows before breakfast. Harry milked one and then
wandered off. He found his brother “hanging with a rope around his neck in the
driveway behind a corn wagon” a few minutes later.
“I felt of him,” said Harry. “I did not
touch his hands to feel the temperature of his body. I only took him by the clothes
and spoke to him a couple of times and saw his eyes were closed.”
Apparently, no one saw it coming.
Albert had recently experienced a couple
of monetary setbacks, but nothing you’d kill yourself over. Three teams of
horses had been stolen in the past year. But he had just purchased a new team
for $340 (roughly $11,000 today, about the value of a used car). It was a
stretch, but Albert put the money together.
Gus Larsen, a retired farmer worth
$100,000, hung himself in his woodshed in 1903. Neighbors said a mad dog bit
him a few years before that. He was treated in Chicago and pronounced cured,
but the incident kept eating at his mind. Would he eventually go mad and kill
his family? Gus didn’t know. Finally, he decided not to wait and killed
himself.
In June, Andrew Hagg hanged himself from
the rafters in the amphitheater at the Henry County Fairgrounds. It was
supposed domestic problems had caused the old man to kill himself, but no one
could say for sure.
And then there was Swan Nelson, a prisoner
in the Henry County Jail. He fastened his belt to the cell door and hung
himself.
Two other men attempted suicide in the
latter half of 1905. Fred Schnoski bungled the job, and friends stopped Will
Hiert before his neck snapped.
And then, to top off the run of bad luck,
five men robbed the First National Bank of Cambridge. Sheriff Swain tracked the
bandits, retrieved the $20,000 taken, and sent the robbers to jail.
And several other deaths defied
explanation.
Charles Baugh, age 18, spilled some gasoline
on his clothes while filling a stove at a local restaurant. When he struck a
match to light the burner, his clothes exploded in flames. He died the next day
from his injuries.
Not long after that, John Tilman, age 20,
shot himself with a revolver. And the following day, a hunter found the body of
a dead baby floating in a box in the Edward River, three miles southeast of
Cambridge.
Final
Wrap-up
In the end, the Cambridge Curse was
nothing more than a series of coincidences. Doc Powell’s suicide had nothing to
do with the death of John V. Streed. Julia Markham’s murder/suicide was tragic
but not unexpected. Everyone close to her suspected she might try to do herself
in. Only, no one thought she’d take her kids with her. So, the only real
mystery was Albert Rosene’s suicide. Outwardly, he seemed happy, but some
demons must have been at eating his insides.
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