by Carrie Hagen
William Stokley had also been the figurehead of the police department since 1871, when he won the mayoral election on a platform against urban violence. Fights between independent fire companies were among the many that flared on the streets, and Stokley, a former volunteer fireman, knew the city had to intervene. His first political act was to establish a paid fire department, a decision that curbed firehouse feuding but failed to address the two main sources of street violence: ethnic tension and unemployment. By the first years of Reconstruction, the immigrant community in Philadelphia had grown to one third of the city’s population, and as industrialization absorbed artisan jobs, native sons blamed the factories and the foreigners for destroying their family businesses. Craftsmen organized themselves politically, neighborhoods organized themselves socially, and resentment fueled riots among blacks, whites, Italians, Irish Catholics, Whigs, and Democrats. City leaders took sides, and the police often joined the fights.
The press accused Stokley’s force of ignorance and underperformance. Aiming to improve his officers’ images and prove his leadership skills, the mayor began surprising them on the job. He immediately fired those who appeared drunk, unkempt, or lazy. The public excoriations promoted Stokley as a disciplinarian, but more professional-looking officers didn’t change the social temperature. Matters became worse in the economic recession that began as the Panic of 1873: most factory workers remained employed, but other city wages dropped 10 percent, and thousands of railway workers were jobless during the winter of 1873 to 1874. As bread lines grew longer, the press criticized police for honoring capitalist wishes by failing to protect the working class. Stokley’s solution was to hire more officers. Five days before July 4, he added 200 men to the force.
Mayor Stokley had heard about Charley Ross’s disappearance on July 3, and he knew many of his new hires were looking for the kidnappers’ horse and wagon. On the morning of the fourth, however, Stokley had bigger things to do than worry about a missing child. In two years, Philadelphia would host America’s Centennial celebration, and he had a party to plan.
The nation’s leaders wanted the Centennial to honor America’s history. When the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, four million Americans had settled the country’s thirteen states. One hundred years later, the nation had grown into 40 million people and thirty-eight states. Great pride and great cost had fostered such progress. Most notably, a Union victory had ended the Civil War nine years before the disappearance of Charley Ross. The states formed one country, but 600,000 soldiers had died, and freed slaves struggled to find work even in the North. Capitalists had channeled the nation’s resources into wealth, but bad investments had bankrupted small businesses and industrial growth sparked ethnic riots. So as much as the nation’s leaders wanted the Centennial to honor America’s history, they needed it to secure America’s future. Americans had to feel united in order to produce a sustainable economy in the aftermath of war. By showcasing inventions and art forms, the Centennial could appeal to their cultural heritage, spark their patriotism, and thus encourage their acceptance of future government initiatives.
Stokley greeted his honored guests inside the city council chamber. The men—councilmen, Centennial commission members, highway commissioners—wore blue ribbons on their jackets. Together, they exited the rear of the building and marched toward eight carriages a block away on Walnut Street. Seven of the carriages turned right and took a scenic route through the central district to the east banks of the Schuylkill River. The mayor’s carriage went directly to the Centennial excavation grounds on the opposite side of the river. There, as he approached the park’s west entrance, Stokley entered a pastoral scene.
Trees lined both riverbanks, and across the Schuylkill, promontory rock formed natural cliffs that hid a railroad and passing freight trains from walkers and horseback riders who meandered along the river’s edge. In the middle of the water, small falls toppled through the Water-Works purification facility, a Greek Revival edifice engineered in the 1790s to cleanse the city from yellow fever. Stokley’s carriage followed the river’s curves. He arrived at the excavation site before 10:00 A.M., joining workmen who stood in the midst of shovels, tools, and carts. Stokley accepted an offered spade and dug into the ground. Workmen erupted into three cheers. When the mayor left, they would begin the work of transforming 450 of the park’s nearly 3,000 acres into an international showcase celebrating America’s first century of independence.
Stokley paraded a short distance from the west end of the new Girard Avenue Bridge, a structure one thousand feet long and one hundred feet wide. Engineers of the day believed it to be the widest bridge in the world, and most of the Centennial’s 10 million visitors would trek across it. The seven carriages full of men in blue ribbons turned onto the east side of the bridge and aligned themselves side by side before they slowly and simultaneously paraded across. From a footpath on the pier, invited guests applauded and whistled. Those not invited watched the procession from the riverbanks.
Christian waited at the Ledger building until mid-morning. Frustrated and defeated, he returned to the station. As he opened the door, a man yelled, “I have it! I have it!” It was the voice of one of his brothers-in-law. He handed Christian a letter that had been delivered to Ross, Schott, & Co. that morning. Officers in the station gathered around Christian.
July 3—Mr. Ros: be not uneasy you son charley bruster be all writ we is got him and no powers on earth can deliver out of our hand. you wil have two pay us before you git him from us, and pay us a big cent to. if you put the cops hunting for him you is only defeetin yu own end. we is got him put so no living power can gets him from us a live. If any approach is maid to his hidin place that is the signil for his instant annihilation. if you regard his lif puts no one to search for him yu mony can fech him out alive an no other existin powers. don’t deceve yuself an think the detectives can git him from us for that is imposebel. You here from us in few day.
Christian finished reading. Nobody spoke.
The eight carriages carrying Stokley and his guests drove back into the center of town around noon to witness the day’s third event: the dedication of City Hall’s cornerstone at Broad and Market Streets. William Penn had envisioned a municipal building on this very location, but the establishment of river communities and suburbs had delayed his plans for 180 years.
Five thousand attendees pushed toward the cornerstone site when Stokley arrived. Underneath an enclosure at the north end, thirty-seven paintings representing each state hung from thirty-seven poles. The mayor and his guests sat inside of a semicircle framed by the poles; small flags, streamers, and the city’s coat of arms decorated the cornerstone in front of them. The local Order of Masons called the ceremony to order, and after a few guest speeches, the Masons presented artifacts including copies of the Pennsylvania state constitution, the city charter, plans for City Hall, the annual message of the mayor, and the newspapers of July 4, 1874. As Stokley watched, the objects were placed inside the vault, which was then covered with marbleized slate and cemented with a stone cap. The cornerstone was sealed.
Benjamin A. Brewster, Pennsylvania’s attorney general and the future U.S. attorney general, gave the keynote address. In it, he remembered William Penn’s plan for the city and praised its ethnocentric pride:
“We have a manly local pride of citizenship; other seaboard cities are provincial or filled with strangers from other parts of the nation and from other countries, and Western cities are like New York, the homes of new men from old places. If a foreigner were to ask me where will I find a real American untouched in his character and nationality by the ever-drifting tide of emigration, domestic and foreign, and with no taint of provincial narrowness, I would say go to Philadelphia, and there you will find just such men and women by the hundreds of thousands.”
Newspapers declared the morning’s ceremonies a success and praised Mayor Stokley for his planning commission’s attention to detail. Over the
next two years, the press would weigh Philadelphia’s civic issues with her Exhibition plans, reminding both citizens and politicians that the country’s international reputation depended upon Philadelphia’s hosting abilities. Congress expected the 1876 Centennial Exhibition to illustrate the state of America on the brink of her second century. And it would—by celebrating history, showcasing industrial progress, and assuring the world that the Civil War had not demoralized patriotism. This portrait, however, would be incorrect.
As Mayor Stokley stood at the end of the dedication ceremony, he didn’t realize that freshly buried in front of him, underneath the sealed cornerstone, was the beginning of a different story that would carry his name across the globe. It would be this narrative, and not the Centennial displays, that would honestly depict the American character during Reconstruction.
Stokley returned to Independence Hall that afternoon. When he entered central police headquarters, officers handed him an odd-looking letter. It told the mayor about a new crime: one that had developed under his watch, and one that would change the authority of his office. No longer the master of ceremonies, Mayor William Stokley found himself at the head of an investigation to solve the first recorded ransom kidnapping in American history.
And the world was making plans to visit his city.
yu be its murderer
CHRISTIAN LEFT POLICE HEADQUARTERS ON THE AFTERNOON of July 4. He directed his horse-drawn carriage past businesses on Market Street and piers along the Delaware River. Much of the city’s working class lived in row homes constructed around shipyards, textile mills, and railroads; less fortunate workers lived in shacks and slums near woodworking houses and clothing sweatshops in the south of the city. Although standardized development had chafed the town’s colonial charm, it had earned Philadelphia a reputation among urban planners as a model of affordable housing.
Christian turned onto Germantown Avenue. He knew he could not keep a ransom note from his wife, and he wanted Walter to go with him to Atlantic City.
On a normal weekday, shoppers strolled along Main Street. Storekeepers pampered their rich patrons, at times taking merchandise outside for those too busy, privileged, or lazy to leave their carriages. Jimmy Jones, a short man with a small, pointed beard and half-lens glasses, whisked fabrics under the noses of such women, and Mr. Jabez, the grocery-store proprietor, delivered and recorded their food orders in an account book. While they waited for their mothers and grandmothers to shop, children ran to buy doughnuts from Mrs. Fox, paper dolls from Mr. Betchel’s stationery shop, and jacks or lemon candy from Mr. Lutz’s general store. Customers had to enter Old Mrs. Potterton’s shop if they wanted to search for favorite china patterns. Plates, saucers and teacups in a variety of shapes covered her store from floor to ceiling.
But as Christian drove toward home, storekeepers celebrated the holiday away from work. Families picnicked next to large tubs of ice water and lemonade on wooded hillsides next to the rivers. Weeping willows cast shade over old Indian trails that led walkers past vine-covered arbors and patches of daffodils. Even though parents had heard of Charley Ross’s disappearance, they still agreed with the initial opinion of the police: whoever took the little boy would eventually return him. In their minds, the kidnapping was an unfortunate incident. They told their children to stay closer to home, but siblings continued to chase each other east of Germantown Avenue, down the hills leading to the Wingohocking Creek, and west of the Avenue, through the valley that rolled along the Wissahickon River.
Because the police had respected Christian’s wish to withhold details, the press had not demanded statements from him or the police. Christian’s cooperation helped the police withhold news of the ransom letter, but his silence kept the public from realizing the new threat to its children at a time when nobody knew if the kidnappers intended to take more victims. Germantown’s children were used to treating the whole town as their backyard. Boys and girls played tricks on their neighbors by putting on old clothes and begging for food at back doors. They attached twine to doorbells and hid in the tall grass between residences, stifling giggles when bewildered neighbors opened doors to phantom callers. They chased one another down bridle paths, hid from one another underneath bridges, and tried to catch bullfrogs in the small water runs that connected rivers, creeks, ponds, dams, and hollows. Daredevils climbed high rocks in the quarry and jumped into the Wingohocking, fearless of sharp rocks hidden in the deep waters. Sometimes the children encountered strangers. Beggars often walked through the fields, and so did an eccentric musician who played a small wooden instrument. Once a wandering artist sat with a group of siblings and entertained them with stories of the Indians. At the end of their afternoon together, he told the children where they could meet him again, as long as they didn’t mention the conversation to their parents.
Germantown’s urban legends played a part in the children’s games. In the seventeenth century, monks had awaited the second coming of Christ in caves along the Wissahickon, and according to folklore, two men with bushy beards still roamed the area; children who feared the apparitions made sure not to run through the woods alone. They also stayed together when they passed a group of black oak trees next to an old mill—a pile of bones had been unearthed under the trees, prompting boys and girls to shriek, “See the ghost! See the ghost!” when they ran by. Some believed another ghost in a white robe haunted the Civil War memorial on Main Street, and others suspected Old Lady Fox of having secret contact with the dead, even though she sent her butler to give the children lemonade and cakes with white icing. The children’s stories were harmless enough, but on Washington Lane, one little boy was haunted by visions of real spooks who had visited his front yard.
Christian told his maids that he and Walter would spend at least one night with Sarah in Atlantic City. They quickly made preparations, and soon the five-year-old sat alone in the passenger’s seat as the wagon pulled out of the Ross property.
Sarah Lewis Ross had given birth to eight children in the eleven years that she had been married to Christian. She had met him at church when she was eighteen. He was almost ten years her senior, a friend of her four older brothers. The two didn’t marry for nearly a decade—perhaps because Christian needed the time to build his business and his income; Sarah came from a wealthy family. After settling down the street from Sarah’s older brother, they had their first child. The baby, a boy, died in infancy. Now, three days after her youngest son had been taken, Sarah had no idea of his disappearance. Christian told the police that he had withheld Charley’s name from the advertisements because, on the off chance that his wife read a Philadelphia paper in Atlantic City, he didn’t want to worry her. Although people would later criticize this choice, it is more puzzling that Sarah was away from her Germantown home in the first place.
Nineteenth-century society valued a woman foremost as a mother. Most women identified themselves according to their role in their households. A mother’s work, then, was to take pride in protecting the morality of her family, to bring up her children as Christians, and to foster a safe, welcoming home. It was not normal for a woman to leave her children, even under the care of nurses and her husband, for weeks on end. Unless, of course, she was ill. Christian had given illness as the reason for Sarah’s trip to Atlantic City with their daughter Sophia. Both parents, though, had planned for Charley and Walter to change places with Sophia in mid-July, and the presence of a four and a five-year-old would have made it difficult for Sarah to recover from whatever illness required her departure from her family. Christian’s neighbors suspected that marital stress—provoked by Christian’s business losses—had led to the separation. But regardless of Sarah’s reasons for being in Atlantic City, Victorian society would attribute whatever harm came to Charley to the absence of her motherly virtue.
Christian and Walter drove through heavy rains. They arrived in Atlantic City at 8:00 P.M. Sarah welcomed them along with Sophia.
“Why did you not bring Charley with you
?” Sarah asked. “Is he well?”
Christian led his wife into her room.
“Charley is missing,” he said.
Christian told Sarah that the situation could be much worse. He gave her an account of the past three days and promised they would soon have their son back.
Two days later, Sarah, Sophia, and Walter took the train back to Germantown.
Christian drove directly to his office from Atlantic City. The streets were crowded after the holiday weekend. As Christian made his way through traffic, he passed dozens of handbills that informed the public of Charley’s kidnapping. Detectives had printed the flyers in his absence; officers were busy attaching them to every public place in Philadelphia and its surrounding towns and mailing them to police stations in New York and northern New Jersey. The police had also begun to more actively pursue suspects: they arrested another entire gypsy tribe for questioning, and after one officer said the kidnappers’ handwriting looked Italian, they took an innocent immigrant into custody.
Christian’s nephew Frank Lewis and Captain Heins had continued to investigate the kidnapping route. They covered a radius of at least ten miles around the kidnapping site, repeatedly driving through Kensington and other villages to the north of the city, searching for more eyewitnesses at taverns, blacksmith shops, and watering holes. Frank Lewis had also helped an officer write a third newspaper ad in Christian’s absence. It appeared on July 5 in the Sunday Public Ledger and once again offered $300 for Charley’s return. Other papers would print it throughout the week.
When Christian arrived at his office on July 6, he didn’t have to wait long to ask for developments in the case. His brother Joseph Ross hurried toward him with another envelope. He had already opened and read it. “No harm has come to Charley,” he said, “but $20,000 is demanded for his ransom.”