We Is Got Him

by Carrie Hagen

  The kidnappers repeatedly reminded Christian in the ransom letters that they had expected the ransom to be quickly paid. Eye -witnesses placing Westervelt in Germantown the month after the abduction remembered his asking about the wealth of the Ross family, and in one note, the kidnappers admitted they had assumed Christian had more money than he did. Bill Mosher was a veteran criminal with a family to support and an established alias—Henderson. He would not have wanted to attract attention to himself, and in order to make a quick exchange, he would have wanted to keep Charley close. So instead of driving north from Philadelphia toward Trenton after abandoning Walter in Kensington, it would have made more sense for him to take Charley back to his—the Mosher—Monroe Street home after dark. He and Douglas had spent more than a month coming and going to and from the countryside on sales trips, and neighbors were used to seeing the men loading and unloading supplies and products from the buggy. They also would have seen Mosher’s sons and neighborhood children running in, out, and around the “Henderson” home on Monroe Street. The addition of one more boy to the household at nighttime could have gone unnoticed.

  “Charley” was the only Mosher son mentioned as having a nickname. If Martha Mosher harbored Charley Ross, she wouldn’t have anticipated keeping the child for longer than a couple of days, and she certainly wouldn’t have wanted the neighbors to hear a child screaming uncontrollably from behind her door. Treating the boy kindly with the names “Lovey” and “Lovey Dove” made sense—Charley had already proven to her husband in the wagon that harsh sounds made him cry, and candy kept him quiet.

  Once Mosher and Douglas realized the Ross camp was stalling and the exchange would take longer than they thought, they did flee the town. Martha stayed in Philadelphia with the children, but she was also nine months pregnant. Kate Morgan, who moved in just before the birth, wouldn’t have known whether the Henderson family had two boys or three the month before, and she wouldn’t have expected a bedridden nine-months pregnant woman to be harboring the child that America searched for. Once Martha had her baby and Mosher read that the police planned to search every household, he told his wife to move the family to New York and live with her brother, William Westervelt.

  Right around this time, Gil Mosher named his brother to the police in the hopes that he would earn Philadelphia’s $20,000 reward. Westervelt agreed to cooperate, because communicating with Walling allowed him to keep an eye on where the police were snooping. Westervelt knew Walling needed him, and he could manipulate the superintendent by threatening to abandon the investigation if he found himself under surveillance. Walling played into his stratagem. Even when Walling admitted to Heins in a telegram that he suspected Westervelt of double-crossing them, Walling did not order his men to keep the suspect’s apartment under constant watch. Walling’s primary goal was to orchestrate the perfect arrest of William Mosher and become a hero. Regardless of Westervelt’s ethics, Walling needed his help— unfortunately for the superintendent, he had underrated his informant’s involvement.

  The night before Mosher and Douglas died, the whole group met at the home of Madame Morrow in New York. Mary Westervelt had complained to her husband about allowing his sister Martha and her children to stay in their small lodging-house rooms, but she was more frustrated when Martha moved out with only her two younger children, leaving her with the older two. On the night of the meeting at Madame Morrow’s, Mary thought she would finally get rid of the Moshers’ older two boys—presumably Willie and Charley—but Westervelt insisted that she take them home, leaving Martha and the two youngest children—presumably Georgie and Mary—with Morrow, the mother of Ike and Ed Morris, two of Mosher’s old colleagues.

  When the kidnappers were killed, everybody was thrown for a shock. Walling now had to answer for his stalled investigation, and there was no better person for him to blame than Westervelt. Prior to the deaths, Westervelt had maintained some privacy, but after the Bay Ridge shootings, he was watched more closely. If Charley Ross was with Westervelt’s family, Westervelt would have had to make the boy truly disappear. It was the day after Mosher and Douglas died that Mosher’s sister-in-law, Al’s wife, claimed the only two living sons were named William and Georgie—which would mean that their son Charley, or “Lovey,” had died. In later interviews, Mary Westervelt and Martha Mosher said that it was Georgie, and not Charley who had died “since” Bill Mosher’s death.

  Twelve years after Westervelt’s trial, Superintendent Walling wrote, “I think [Charley Ross] is dead. I can conceive of no possible reason why, after the two kidnappers had been killed and Westervelt was in prison, Charley Ross should not have been returned had he been alive. The promised immunity from punishment and the reward offered by the Mayor of Philadelphia are good reasons for supposing that the child, if alive, would have been returned to its parents.” It is possible that the “son” who died after Mosher’s death was the real Charley Ross, murdered after being disguised for the previous five months as a Mosher child. If the Mosher family or their colleagues silenced the real Charley Ross, Mary Westervelt and Martha Mosher would have attracted less attention by saying the deceased child in the Mosher household was named Georgie, not Charley.

  The Mosher boys were used to using an alias—for the entire year they lived in Philadelphia, they had identified themselves as Hendersons. If Martha Mosher began referring to her biological son Georgie as “Charley,” it is likely that he and her older son William would cooperate without revealing the family secret.

  Mayor Stokley announced the state’s new kidnapping bill just before Westervelt was taken into custody in Philadelphia. Therefore, the Philadelphia authorities could only indict him on charges of complicity, not kidnapping. If Westervelt were to tell them everything he knew, and had Martha Mosher harbored the child as Detective Wood suggested, then Westervelt’s recently widowed sister and mother of three would go to prison for potentially twenty-five years, the maximum amount of time allowed by the new law. Westervelt knew the newspapers questioned the loopholes Walling had allowed in the investigation. If he kept his mouth shut, he also knew that Walling would help him and the Mosher family as much as he could without sacrificing his position or his popularity. This meant that it was possible Westervelt would serve only seven years at most. Walling, however, would serve the rest of his career knowing that the Mosher family and their criminal friends knew just how much more he could have done to recover America’s lost child.

  East Washington Lane, Present Day

  GERMANTOWN AVENUE IS STILL A THOROUGHFARE FOR COMmuters traveling between Center City Philadelphia, and its northwestern suburbs. Drivers slowly pass along it as they approach the center of Germantown. True to its history, the two-lane road is especially rough in the vicinity of Market Square, and tires skid over trolley lines in the broken pavement, bumping against potholes, cement, cobblestones— layers of failed street construction.

  As the industrial age entered the twentieth century, more African-American and immigrant laborers found employment in Germantown’s factories and moved into its neighborhoods. The community enjoyed economic prosperity into the 1940s, escaping the initial economic devastation of the Great Depression, but over the next two decades, two factors transformed the neighborhood: Germantown’s wealthier families moved back into Center City, and factory closures took jobs away from thousands of blue-collar workers. House values dropped, lower-income families moved in, and the economic decline intensified racial hostility. Many white homeowners joined the “white flight” from the city into the suburbs, but over the years, Germantown has remained a somewhat racially heterogeneous section of Philadelphia. Although several of its blocks are undergoing gentrification, the neighborhood’s low-income population lives mainly in row homes, and most of the mansions that once housed Philadelphia’s elite have been either torn down, abandoned, or converted into apartments. The lawns of those that still stand, however, are lush and green.

  About a mile down East Washington Lane, the Zion Hill Church
of Christ sits on the former Ross property. The stone wall that Walter and Charley played behind is still intact, but only a few bushes remain in the yard. Next to the church, blocks of row homes stretch up the hill toward Germantown Avenue, and across the street, part of a disintegrating mansion has been converted into a daycare center. Beech trees line this specific block, but they bend under telephone wires, and their branches have been cut. With the exception of cars passing on the road, it is quiet today, a Sunday afternoon. And even though a small street two blocks northeast of here is called Ross, generally the people here have never heard about Charley, or this piece of Philadelphia’s history.

  William Westervelt was released from prison on January 18, 1881. He gave at least one interview to the New York Tribune soon after his return to the Lower East Side, and in the article he maintained that he had had nothing to do with the Charley Ross kidnapping. Westervelt stayed out of the newspapers until his obituary appeared in 1890. His sister Martha Mosher and at least two of her nephews gave sporadic interviews through the end of the nineteenth century; in her statements, Martha voiced her innocence and her belief that Charley was alive. In 1897, Gil Mosher’s son Ellsworth came forward with the news that his father, on his deathbed, said the bones of Charley Ross were buried inside of a saloon on Grand Street once leased to Bill Mosher. Although the bones of a child had been found in the wall when the building was torn down, they were those of William, Bill Mosher’s oldest son, who had died years before Charley’s kidnapping.

  Not much is known about the life of Captain William Heins after 1875. Over the next two years, his name disappeared from records of captains who served under Mayor Stokley. Mayor William S. Stokley held office until 1886, when voters denied him a fourth term. While some historical records of Philadelphia honor Stokley for noble service, newspapers of the day accused him of “scandal breeding” as a member of the Philadelphia Buildings Commission, the group responsible for the construction of City Hall. Refusing audits, the Commission made personal demands on the city budget and awarded contracts without advertising for bids; under their watch, City Hall cost 12 million dollars more than expected and was finished twelve years later than estimated. Newspapers referred to the building as “the temple of Philadelphia’s folly.”

  Three months before the Centennial opened, the government released 1.5 million dollars to satisfy its financial commitment to the exhibition. Although investors did lose money, the celebration was considered successful. More than one in five Americans visited the Centennial grounds in Fairmount Park, participating in the effort to heal civic pride and American business. Foreign visitors admired America’s industrial and agricultural displays, paying particular attention to Samuel Colt revolvers, Cyrus McCormick reapers, and the Corliss engine. Philadelphia’s execution encouraged foreign trade and inspired creative minds, visionaries who organized six major fairs around the nation within forty years of the Centennial.

  In spite of his frustration with the superintendent, Christian Ross met with George Walling in New York as late as 1887, the same year that Walling penned a memoir chronicling his thirty-seven-year career as a New York police officer (he retired in 1885). In his book, Walling said the case of Charley Ross affected him more deeply than any other.

  Christian Ross never stopped searching for Charley. Within two years of the kidnapping, his dry-goods business failed and he went bankrupt. Through continued personal hardship, he sifted through the statements of those saying they were his son—at first the stories of adolescent boys, and then teenagers, young adults, and finally, grown men.

  In 1876, following the advice of friends who recommended he clarify erroneous information and defend his own integrity, Christian penned a memoir entitled The Father’s Story of Charley Ross, the Kidnapped Child. Although there was commercial interest in the book, Christian did not make much money from it.

  In June 1878, Governor Hartranft of Pennsylvania gave him a title and the position of “Harbor Master.” The job, a token position, paid a small salary. That same year, P. T. Barnum contacted Christian, offering to give him $10,000 if he would agree to display Charley on the Barnum tour once the child was found. Christian agreed, provided that he could return the money and cancel the deal if he ever found his son. He died at home, following an illness, in 1897.

  Sarah Ross lived in the family home in Germantown until 1912, when she dropped dead of heart failure after entering her pastor’s home one day. At the time of her death, five children survived her: her sons Henry and Walter, and her daughters, Sophia, Marion, and Anne. In 1926, her children sold the property on East Washington Lane, and the home was razed. Since then, three different churches have held services in a building on the lot.

  As an adult, Walter Ross lived a few miles north of Germantown, in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood. Both he and his older brother Henry became very successful businessmen. Throughout his career, Walter worked in Philadelphia, moving from the position of clerk to investment banker before establishing his own firm, one that gave him a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1931, his son Walter Jr. was killed in an auto crash on his way from Newtown, Pennsylvania, to Walter Sr.’s home in Chestnut Hill.

  Over time, the Ross story has been forgotten, but the case received small bursts of media attention in the twentieth century. In 1924, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, schoolboy kidnappers and killers, said in court documents that they were influenced by Mosher and Douglas’s behavior. And in 1932, news of another stolen child shocked America. About thirty miles northeast of Germantown, in the town of Ewing, New Jersey, Charles Lindbergh’s baby was taken from his crib.

  Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, men claiming to be Charley Ross continued to come forward. Perhaps the most famous was Gustave Blair, a man in his sixties who first publicized his story in 1931. Blair said he had been taken from the Ross home and raised in Illinois as “Nelson Rinear” until his adopted father, attempting to conceal “Nelson’s” true identity, tried to kill him. Blair said he then fled to Canada, changed his name, and returned to Illinois years later, when an older adopted brother confirmed his identity.

  Walter and his siblings immediately dismissed the man’s story, saying it was the kind of tale that had bankrupted their father. In 1934, Gustave Blair took his case to a civil court in Arizona, and a jury believed him, enabling him to legally change his name to Charley Ross. He then contacted the media and asked people to donate enough money to send him to Philadelphia, where he would reunite himself with his long-lost family. When they raised enough, Blair and his fiancée traveled to Germantown, aiming to marry in Walter’s church— Cliveden Presbyterian. The pastor refused to marry them, and the family refused to meet them. In 1939, Blair filed a civil lawsuit against Walter Ross, demanding to be recognized as an heir. Rejecting the court papers, Walter moved to his New York home. He spent most of his time there until he died four years later, in 1943.

  Charley Ross was never returned home to East Washington Lane, and a body was never identified. Regardless of whether he was killed, Charley Ross died the day that Mosher and Douglas parked their wagon on Washington Lane and offered him candy on a summer evening. Social historians have attempted to trace Charley Ross into the twentieth century, studying stories selected from the hundreds of those who wished to end the mystery with their tales of woe—and perhaps, somewhere in that pile of discarded leads, the real Charley was dismissed, denied his own identity.

  When Mayor Stokley watched the Masons drop the day’s newspapers into a vault on July 4, 1874, he was ensuring that his world, if perhaps lost in history, would never disappear. Two centuries later, all that is really known about Charley is cemented in that cornerstone of City Hall, underneath the statue of William Penn that still defines Philadelphia’s skyline:

  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, broa
d buttoned straw hat and laced shoes. This child was lost from Germantown on Wednesday afternoon. 1st lost, between 4 and 5 o’clock.

  The End

  acknowledgments

  THIS BOOK IS A WORK OF FAITH.

  The faith that my family, Bill, Dianne, David, and John Alexander have had in my storytelling.

  The faith that I put in my writing mentors, Suzannah Lessard, Richard Todd, Laura Wexler, Philip Gerard, and Steve Luxenberg.

  The faith that my agent, Ethan Bassoff, had in my proposal, and that my first editor, Peggy Hageman, had in the manuscript.

  And finally the faith of my partner, Jeff, who believed that one day, he would again have a couchmate for Thursday night TV.

  I am grateful to Stephanie Gorton, my current editor, for her wisdom, optimism, and investigative eye. I also appreciate Ellen S. Leach for her thorough and attentive eye as copy editor.

  I thank Dr. James Butler of La Salle University, an expert on Germantown’s geography and Victorian culture, who guided my Philadelphia research and reading. The Wister Collection at La Salle University’s Connelly Library holds joyful details of life in nineteenth-century Philadelphia. It was a pleasure to read through these archives.

  I have spent hours in the archives of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Germantown and Chestnut Hill Historical Societies, the New-York Historical Society, the National Archives, the City Archives, and in the Map Collection and the Microfilm Reading Room at the Philadelphia Free Library. The librarians, historians, and archivists have been nothing but supportive and enthusiastic about this project. Early on, the New-York Historical Society put me in touch with Richard McDermott, a passionate researcher who provided early enthusiasm for the project and suggested readings that helped me recreate the Five Points neighborhood. Special thanks goes to Alex Batlett and Judith Callard of the Germantown Historical Society. Both guided me through minutiae in the final hours of my research.