In 1902, while the present day McLean County Museum of History was being built, a trial took place in the Turnverein Hall. This trial riveted the attention of McLean County residents and involved a 5 day voir dire to find a jury (of men) to try Merritt Chism for the murder of his wife, Mary E. Chism.
Merritt Chism was the father of eleven children, ten of whom were still living when his first wife died in April 1897. Three of his sons were already living on their own and seven children were at home. After 1897, Chism decided to give up farming, and put all his land (661 acres) into tenant farming, so that he might give his attention to his dependent children. All of the care of his children had been put on the shoulders of eighteen year old Edith Chism. The youngest child was Mattie, who was five years old at the time of Merritt's second marriage. Chism was known as a very prosperous farmer in White Oak Township.
Chism came to meet his second wife, Mary Freedlund, when he visited her Carlock boardinghouse for lunch in late January of 1899. At that lunch they entered into conversation, probably because her sister-in-law was working on the Chism farm to help with the children. What followed in the three reported conversations before their marriage, according to Chism, was a very frank discussion about his desire to find a wife. Chism asked Freedlund whether she had a good temper, and Freedlund asked Chism if his sons swore. She said that she was unwilling to take her son into a home where he might hear swearing. Chism told her that his older sons did swear, but that together, they could break them of the habit. In a matter of days the two had decided to marry and then did so on February 15, 1899. Harvey Freedlund (Mary's son) testified that on that date they visited a department store (he thought it was Klemm's) and that while there Chism asked Mary to come to an attorney's office to sign an ante nuptial agreement that she would accept a lesser share of his farm on his death. Fredlund refused to do this and the marriage went forward as planned.
Chism's testimony was such that a reputable paper, like the Pantagraph, could not print all the facts that came out at the trial. In fact, after the first morning's testimony, the women spectators did not reappear in the afternoon, so shocking was the nature of the testimony. What was printed in the Pantagraph seems to suggest that Mary accused Merritt of having improper relations with his daughters. Chism further testified that Mary had demanded that he sign over 60 acres of his land to her, and that he refused to do this. Chism was determined not to give anything to his second wife. According to him, she was hostile to his remaining children and demanded that some of them leave home.
Dr. Dewey of the Kankakee Insane Asylum was the expert for the defendant and testified in great detail as to the temporary insanity of Merritt Chism. He alluded to an old head injury received as a teenager, the irregularity of Chism's heartbeats and a peculiar knee jerk reflex which all pointed to an underlying nervous weakness, all leading to his temporary insanity. Even Chism's exhaustion after the murder was attributed to his temporary insanity. It should also be remembered that at this time, medical science held temporary insanity and epilepsy to be analogous to one another and Dr. Dewey testified on this occasion: "Epilepsy is analogous to temporary frenzy or mania and is treated by some as one and the same. Others hold it as a separate disease." A large percentage of McLean County citizens were in the room to hear this irresponsible statement.
The murder was described in graphic detail. Mary Chism had demanded that a wagon be prepared for her to take two of the younger girls to church. Merritt described a series of demands by Mary for different wagons or buggies to be hitched to a team and his meek compliance. Finally, while the wagon carrying his two daughters and Mary Chism was exiting the farm gate, he leapt on Mary Chism with a pocketknife, which he claimed he had been cleaning his nails with during a heated argument. He stabbed her as his children fled the vehicle. Harvey Freedlund ran from the house to help his mother. He jumped on Merritt's back and attempted to choke him, but could not get his hands around his throat. He snatched a baseball bat, but Merritt wrestled it from him, and it was this baseball bat that Merritt would use to chase his wife down the road and then batter her brains out.
Despite his vigorous (and expensive) defense, Chism was convicted to 17 years in prison. In 1908 the Pantagraph reported that he had sold and spent everything on defending himself and trying to secure an earlier release. When he asked for a pardon, a ballot was printed in the Pantagraph so that the citizens of McLean County could express their opinions and ultimately, prevent his pardon. He was finally released in February 1910 after serving his full term, less time off for good behavior.
The Aftermath
In 1907 Earl (age 20) and Roy (age 23) Chism were arrested in connection with robbing a series of post offices in northern Illinois. Their brother, Walter, who had been active in defense of their father, hired an attorney to represent the two young men. Walter also went bail for the two, but they jumped bail to go on a further robbery spree. In 1909 Earl, Roy and a third brother, Harvey, (not Freedlund) were blowing safes in stores in Spickard, Missouri and robbing stores in the general vicinity. While fleeing, one of the Chism brothers shot and fatally wounded the sheriff. A posse was formed, and Earl was fatally wounded in a shoot out. Harvey had fled the state during the posse chase, but when he was found in Bloomington, Roy, the second Chism brother, denied that Harvey had been with them. Roy was sentenced to five years in prison in Leavenworth, KS and interest in Harvey seemed to vanish. (in the photo Earl and Roy are the two brothers in the back row on the left. Harvey is on the right in the back row.)
The oldest sister, Edith, married Frank Ory very soon after the murder and moved to South Dakota, from whence she did not return for 15 years. The three younger sisters, Imo (Long), Stella (Walter) and Mattie (the youngest and never married) all remained out of the newspapers. Mattie became a school teacher and worked in Sangamon County for many years. Imo died in Arizona where she lived with her husband and Stella eventually lived and died in Los Angeles.
Walter, who remained true to his father, sold a farm to his father in 1924 for $38,000, seeming to indicate that although the Pantagraph reported Chism had been ruined by his legal troubles, Chism had the wherewithal to make this purchase. In fact, after leaving prison, he had a farm to return to that had been left in the hands of a tenant farmer. Chism had returned to farming just one year after his release from prison. At the age of 80, in 1932, he took his own life by drowning in a cistern on the farm of his son, Walter. Walter Chism died in December of 1932 in a road accident during his work as a truck driver for a cousin's trucking business.
Harvey Freedlund, who was 17 at the time of his mother's murder, attended ISNU in 1904 and 1905 and went on to be a teacher and principal of a vocational school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He married Helena Watson in Pike County and was buried there in 1945 with her family.
The marriage of Chism and Fredlund seems very impetuous, not the behavior of two rational middle aged people. The trial actually turned out to be a trial of Mary Freedlund, because it was Chism's recounting of her imagined or actual past wrongs that he recounted to try to justify his conduct. And of course the evidence was heard only by men, because women were not considered to be reliable jury members. Powerless and voiceless, Mary Freedlund was silenced forever with a baseball bat.