by Carrie Hagen
Christian turned onto Washington Lane and headed downhill to his house. Between one and ten acres separated the residences on either side of the street. Christian’s brother-in-law Joseph Lewis lived on a large property at the top of the hill, close to the train station. Christian owned a smaller plot farther down the street. As he approached his drive, he was surprised that the boys weren’t waiting for him. He walked through the garden up to his sheltered front porch and asked the nurses for his sons; the women said they had been playing outside with other children for close to two hours. Christian walked to the front gate and listened for the boys—when he didn’t hear them, he decided to wait on the front porch with a newspaper. An hour later, the cook served dinner. Assuming his sons had wandered off with a friend, Christian sent a servant to find them. Only when they didn’t return during the meal did he become concerned. Christian went back to the street, followed by members of his household, who divided into small search parties. As Christian walked in front of his house, his neighbor Mary Kidder called to him.
“Are your boys likely to ride with strangers?”
Christian stared at her. Four days earlier, Walter had run up to him with a white braided stick of candy about four inches long. He said a man in a wagon had given one to him and one to Charley. Christian had asked both boys if they had spoken to the strangers. “No, sir,” Walter had answered. Later, Christian remembered feeling touched by the encounter, glad that men took the time to notice children.
Mrs. Kidder hurried across her lawn. Her husband, Walter, followed. She told Christian that she had looked out of her window earlier and noticed his boys talking to a man. Shortly thereafter, she saw them ride away with him in a wagon. Mrs. Kidder had thought the scene odd, but with the exception of petty robberies and corner lounging, crime didn’t threaten the people of Germantown. That week, a local paper had addressed the town’s biggest complaints: the shabby condition of Germantown Avenue, cooks who threw kitchen trash outdoors, women who visited saloons, and police officers who allowed bartenders to illegally sell oysters. As of 1874, kidnapping in America was a misdemeanor, not a felony, and certainly not anything parents in Germantown had ever feared. Walter Kidder walked up the hill with Christian to Main Street and the police station. It was 8:00 P.M.
The Fourtheenth Precinct was located at the town hall on Germantown Avenue. Before they reached the precinct station house, Christian saw a man walking next to a child in the distance. He recognized Walter and rushed to him.
“Where have you been, Walter?” he asked.
The little boy rubbed his red, swollen eyes. In his hand, he held firecrackers. “Walter, where is Charley?”
Walter looked confused. “Why, he is all right. He is in the wagon.” Walter had assumed that Charley had returned home and he was the one lost.
The man standing next to him identified himself as Mr. Henry Peacock. He told Christian that on his commute home from work, he had seen and heard a terrified Walter talking to women on a street corner in Kensington. When he heard “a man had put him out of a buggy and had then gone off and left him,” Mr. Peacock offered to take Walter to the police station. The little boy, he said, then burst “into a frantic fit of crying.” Walter was able to tell Henry Peacock where he lived, but he only mentioned one man as being in the buggy, and he didn’t say anything about a brother.
Christian wrote down Mr. Peacock’s address and asked him to walk Walter home. He and Mr. Kidder continued to the police station.
Germantown’s Town Hall stood at the corner of Germantown Avenue and Haines Street. From a distance in any direction, towns-people could see a four-sided clock positioned on the roof, the rotunda above it, and a narrow tower rising from the rotunda into the sky. Six pillars supported the front entrance of Town Hall. It had served as a makeshift hospital during the beginning of the Civil War, but now the building remained fairly empty, except for twelve police officers, any disorderly drunk locked up in a basement cell, and the occasional audience gathering to see a traveling entertainer or politician. Christian and his neighbor walked up the steps. They found Lieutenant Alexander Buchanan, the commanding officer on duty, and asked him to wire a telegraph inquiring about a lost child to central police headquarters. The central office dialogued with each of its precincts via telegraph, which often meant that a network of bells transmitted important communications between offices. Buchanan, a large thirty-eight-year-old Irishman with thick, black eyebrows and an ungroomed moustache, wrote down Charley’s name and age.
Thirty minutes later, Buchanan reported that no lost little boys had been found. He said he was sure Charley would show up soon and advised Christian to calm down.
Christian asked what else the police could do.
Buchanan said he couldn’t do anything else.
Christian persisted.
Buchanan advised him to contact a Captain William Heins at central police headquarters on Chestnut Street.
Walter Kidder walked Christian back to Washington Lane and returned home. At the top of the hill, Christian stopped at the house of Joseph Lewis, his brother-in-law.
The Ross and Lewis families had known each other for decades. Both were from central Pennsylvania, and both were descended from successful businessmen and related to state politicians. Christian’s grandfather was a German immigrant who served in the Revolutionary War and later operated a popular mercantile store in Harrisburg. His daughter Catherine married Joseph Ross, another dry-goods shopkeeper, and the couple raised seven sons in a suburb of Harrisburg called Middletown. Christian was the oldest boy. After working in his father’s shop, Christian moved to Philadelphia in his mid-twenties, taking his younger brother Joseph with him. At a Methodist church in Philadelphia, Christian met Sarah Ann Lewis, the younger sister of four brothers who ran a local clothing business. The couple married nine years later, when Sarah was 28 and Christian was 38. A year after their marriage in 1863, Christian’s father, Joseph, died and left Christian an inheritance that he used to open his own clothing store—Ross, Schott, & Co. By 1874, as Christian’s business faltered, the Lewis brothers owned three successful dry-goods stores in town, and Joseph Lewis owned more property than any other resident on Washington Lane.
Joseph and his son Frank Lewis listened to Christian talk about the events of the past few hours. Joseph then advised Christian to follow Lieutenant Buchanan’s suggestion and visit Captain William Heins at police headquarters. He sent his son Frank with him. The men took a streetcar down Germantown Avenue, changing cars once at the Ninth Street depot before they reached Independence Hall—home of the central police station, city council chambers, the courthouse, and the mayor’s office. As they walked towards the station Christian and his nephew passed the windows of colonial storefronts. Few lights reflected in them. Christian noticed how unusually quiet the city seemed.
The men arrived around 11:00 P.M., just after Captain Heins had left for the night. The detective on duty listened to Christian’s story and told him drunks must have taken Charley. He said the men would eventually sober up, realize their folly and drop Charley off.
Christian asked what else the police could do.
Nothing, the detective answered.
Christian and his nephew disagreed. They took a streetcar to Kensington and walked to the local police station. The officers on duty there said they had heard nothing about a missing child or Lieutenant Buchanan’s wire. Christian and Frank found the intersection where Walter had been crying and knocked on the door of a nearby store. A druggist answered. He listened to Christian’s questions but said he couldn’t help him. The men walked two blocks to Mr. Peacock’s house, awoke him, and asked again where the men had abandoned Walter. Peacock took them to a different shop. Nobody answered this door. Peacock then led the men around the neighborhood for two hours, answering whatever questions he could. By the time Christian and Frank left Kensington, no streetcars were running, and they had to walk six miles before finding an open stable on Germantown Avenue. It was 5:00
A.M. when they arrived home.
Christian woke Walter two hours later. He emptied the pockets of his son’s clothes from the day before and found five-cent pieces, copper coins, and unopened candy. As soon as Walter had eaten breakfast, he went to his Uncle Joseph’s house with Christian and recounted what he could of Charley’s disappearance. Afterward, Christian and Frank returned to police headquarters in search of Captain Heins. They found him and told their story once again. Other officers on duty repeated their belief that drunken fools had taken the child; Heins, however, took Christian’s concern more seriously. He assigned an Officer Etwein Joyce to accompany Christian back to Kensington on a search for more information.
A thunderstorm loomed over the city that Thursday, July 2, but there wasn’t much rain. One man referred to the humid, cloudy day as “head-aching weather.” Outside of John Hay’s tobacco shop on Richmond Street in Kensington, men often gathered to sit, smoke, and talk about boat races or their jobs at the shipyards down the road. Christian and Officer Joyce entered the store and introduced themselves to Hay. He remembered selling firecrackers to Walter the night before. He said he had assumed Walter was a neighborhood boy and didn’t think anything much about him.
In search of eyewitnesses, the men walked outside to interview pedestrians, several of whom recalled seeing Walter crying on the corner. Only one person could place Charley in the wagon at the scene. A little girl said she saw the buggy with the little boy drive away as she stood on the sidewalk.
By now, Officer Joyce was suspicious. He left instructions with the Kensington Police to search for Charley and took Christian and Frank Lewis to the nearest ferry stop along the Delaware River. Joyce asked the driver if he had seen a child matching Charley’s description. The man said no. Joyce decided to take Christian back to Germantown. He determined that if the men had followed Germantown Avenue directly to Kensington, somebody would have seen the children in the wagon. The men stopped at feed stores, stables, hotels, and watering holes along the Avenue. They asked if anybody had observed a horse and wagon pulling two men and two young boys the day before. Nobody had. A few hours later, Walter sat between his father and the officer on their way back to Kensington. This time, the men asked Walter to try piecing together his journey from the day before. His memory shocked both men. Based on his recognition of landmarks that the kidnappers had identified, Walter remembered a route involving eighteen different turns over the course of eight miles. His recollection was verified by eyewitnesses at feed stores, stables, and hotels along the more residential second half of the route.
Christian took Walter with him to headquarters, where he drafted a newspaper advertisement. Only one paper, the Philadelphia Public Ledger, agreed to print the ad the next morning on such short notice. Meanwhile, word of Charley’s disappearance had spread quickly in Germantown. That night, the community gathered to pray at the Ross home.
The next day, more eyewitnesses stepped forward. A local doctor reported that on the morning of Tuesday, June 30, the day before the kidnapping, he had seen two men in a dirty, dusty buggy near the Ross property. He had noticed the wagon because it was parked in the sun, not in nearby shade that would have kept the horse cooler. As one man sat in the driver’s seat, the doctor noticed another jumping from behind a wall adjacent to the Lewis property. The jumper paused to clear his forehead from sweat, then sat next to the driver in the sun. They noticed the doctor’s gaze, and as he passed them on the street, they pulled a curtain over the back of the carriage. The doctor wasn’t sure if the men were thieves or gas men, but as he didn’t see a policeman nearby, he continued on with a house call.
A handyman remembered that on Monday, June 29, he’d heard a stranger offering candy to the Ross boys and talking to them on the street. A couple of people in town said that on Sunday, June 28, strangers in a wagon had waved to Walter and Charley as they left church. Mr. Johnson, another neighbor of Christian’s, said he had seen a man with three-inch long whiskers offer the children candy the previous Saturday, June 27. After listening to his neighbors, Christian realized that the day of the kidnapping was the fifth day in a row that the kidnappers had made contact with his children in broad daylight. Sarah Ross, still in Atlantic City, had no idea of her son’s disappearance.
Readers of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, the city’s most popular daily, opened up their papers on the morning of July 3. In the “Lost and Found” column, they read about a missing breastpin marked with a topaz stone. They read of misplaced gold spectacles, a missing gold charm bracelet, and a striped gray cat named Dick whose owners wanted him in exchange for a “liberal” reward. And then, underneath a request for a gold double-drop earring, they read about a missing child.
Lost—A SMALL BOY, ABOUT FOUR YEARS of age, light complexion and light curly hair. A suitable reward will be given by returning him to EL JOYCE, Central Police Station.
At the time of the advertisement, Charley had been missing for thirty-six hours. Neither Charley’s nor Christian’s name was printed in the ad because Christian feared disturbing Sarah should she read the Ledger in Atlantic City. Early on the morning of July 3, he took the train back to central headquarters on Chestnut Street. By then, Officer Joyce had convinced his peers that while drunken men may have taken Charley Ross, they did so with a motive. The police asked Christian and Frank to tell their story once again. This time, they took notes. With them were Philadelphia’s mayor William S. Stokley, the district attorney, the chief of police, Captain Heins, and a number of detectives.
The men asked Christian several questions directed at identifying possible kidnapping motives. They then asked him to direct their first move. Christian suggested they look for the horse and wagon. Police Chief Kenneth Jones told his lieutenants to dispatch plainclothes officers to each district in the city and to search any place that housed or hired horses. Each officer was instructed to observe all “suspicious persons” and to question their contacts in the criminal community. Two detectives took Frank Lewis to get his little cousin Walter back in Germantown so the boy could identify the kidnappers’ route once again. Meanwhile, Christian continued to answer detectives’ questions at the station. They asked him to explain any troubles he’d had with family members or servants; which servants he had fired; if any creditors wished to collect payment by taking Charley; what arguments he had had recently and with whom; whether he had ever served on a jury. At the end of Christian’s testimony, the detectives had the names of a few fired servants and one convicted felon. All were located, interviewed, and dismissed.
Plainclothes officers learned no new information until the afternoon. The first lead came from Germantown. Residents had told Lieutenant Alexander Buchanan at Town Hall that they had seen a gypsy band traveling with a crying child along Washington Lane. Buchanan’s message rang through the bells of the telegraph system in each of the city’s precincts. At 10:00 P.M., the sixteenth ward, in West Philadelphia reported that a gypsy party camped in nearby woods. Three officers and Joseph Lewis went to identify the child.
Several women were watching two men fight when the search party arrived. After the police broke up the struggle, one man was bleeding from a cut in his face. The gypsies appeared to be traveling with several horses and two wagons full of trinkets and chests. They denied having a strange child, and the bleeding man threatened to shoot any officer who further disturbed his people. Officers climbed into the wagons, opened each chest, and ripped through its contents—scattering clothes, weapons, and jewelry onto the ground. The two men were arrested on charges of property theft and released from custody the next morning.
While Christian and Frank Lewis awaited the news from West Philadelphia, they wrote a second advertisement at the central station. This one offered money for the lost boy’s return to the Philadelphia Public Ledger building at Number Five North Sixth Street. Once again, Charley’s name was withheld.
be not uneasy
ACROSS CHESTNUT STREET FROM INDEPENDENCE HALL, A statue of Benjamin
Franklin stood on a corner podium of the Ledger building on Sixth Street. On the morning of July 4, while scattered showers kept some off the cobblestone streets, newsboys sold two-cent papers underneath the eyes of the Philadelphia hero. The Ledger headlines reviewed Philadelphia’s Independence Day activities, lightning storms in Maryland, and the president’s vacation plans. At the top of the front page, the editor had posted a notice under the title “Too Late for Classification.”
300$ REWARD WILL BE PAID TO THE person returned to No 5 North Sixth Street, a small Boy, having long, curly, flaxen hair, hazel eyes, clear, light-skinned round face, dressed in a brown linen suit with a short skirt, broad buttoned straw hat and laced shoes. This child was lost from Germantown on Wednesday afternoon. 1st lost, between 4 and 5 o’clock.
Christian Ross had spent the previous night at police headquarters. Early the next morning, he walked across Sixth Street, hoping that the detectives were right and a reward had prompted Charley’s return. If and when a reader of the morning’s Ledger brought Charley to the news building, Christian wanted to be there before his little boy arrived. He waited until 9:00 A.M.
Back at Independence Hall, Mayor William Stokley entered the City Council chamber. One of Philadelphia’s longest-running mayors, Stokley took great pride in the power he held over the second largest city in the country. His constituents numbered close to 800,000, more than 20 percent of whom worked in the 8,000 factories contained within the city’s 120 square miles. Manufacturing defined Philadelphia during industrialization, but so did its Republican majority: almost five times as many Republicans held councilmen positions as did Democrats, and in 1872, Ulysses S. Grant accepted the Republican nomination for president at the city’s Academy of Music.
