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CHAPTER 1
The temperature in Philadelphia on July 1, 1874, hovered comfortably in the seventies. The sky was clear, bright, and sunny, giving the inhabitants one more reason to be joyful at the approaching weekend. The Fourth of July was the national holiday most closely identified with Philadelphia's colorful early history, and this year it would be celebrated with redoubled spirits. The city already had been chosen as the site for the Centennial Exposition, scheduled to open in time to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the nation's independence. The Centennial Board of Finance had just awarded contracts for the Memorial building and the main Exposition building, which would cover eighteen acres.
Overlying the general optimism were two ceremonies specifically planned for the Fourth, both symbols of municipal progress. At one end of the city, the new Girard Avenue Bridge, a thousand feet long and one hundred feet wide — the widest bridge in the world — was to be formally opened for travel across the Schuylkill River. The span was to be the principal avenue to the newly opened Zoological Gardens in Fairmount Park, sixteen acres of aviaries, monkey houses, bear pits, prairie dog villages, and deer parks. A display of fireworks which promised to be "an unusually brilliant one" was scheduled for Fairmount Park in the presence of the City Council.
At Penn Square the cornerstone was to be laid for the new City Hall, an enormous structure with an elaborate FrenchRenaissance exterior and a sweeping tower capped by a statue of the city's founder, William Penn. Pennsylvania's Governor John Frederick Hartranft and President Ulysses S. Grant had been invited for the ceremonies, but by reason of engagements previously made had said they would be unable to appear. Philadelphia Mayor William S. Stokley's speech thus took on added importance, and as he prepared it his civic pride rose to remarkable heights.
"I have seen and lived in most all of the capitals of Europe and I have read of all of the great cities of the world," he wrote, "but I have never seen or read of such a city as this is. There is no town in the world of its dimension and population, and there never has been one that possesses such accommodations for its people. Artisans, even laborers, live with us as they have never lived before. Men whose daily earnings in other cities will hardly sustain life and provide a shelter for themselves and their families except in the most rude, coarse, scanty, and crowded way, are here the occupants of single and comfortable dwellings, and thousands of them the owners of their own houses.
"The effect of this upon the mental and moral condition of the citizens is evident even to transient visitors. We have no such class here as the poor working man; our city is filled with workmen, independent, prosperous freemen, who bring up families of boys with habits of thrift and industry to go out in life prepared and resolved to earn homes because they have enjoyed them in their happy childhood."
To document his case, the mayor contrasted his city with New York. At the beginning of 1873 Philadelphia had 134,740 buildings, of which 124,302 were dwelling houses, some 60,000 more than New York. And this despite the fact that the population of Philadelphia was less than 800,000, while New York's was more than 1,000,000.
Philadelphia's citizens lived in a comfortably sprawling area of 12 square miles crisscrossed by more than 900 miles of streets and roads, more than 500 of them paved. The city boasted 10,000 gas lamps; more than 1600 schoolteachers and more than 80,000 pupils; more than 34,000 bathrooms, most of them supplied with hot water; and more than 400 places of public worship. The Quaker City's well-stocked houses of prostitution were understandably omitted from the tabulation.
"Of all the cities in this nation, Philadelphia is pre-eminently American," the mayor continued after inditing these figures. "Its characteristics and customs, the habits and peculiarities of the people are essentially American. If a foreigner were to ask me where will I find a real man 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."
Having prepared this eulogy to the city, Mayor Stokley made his plans to get out of it. Shortly after the Fourth he would leave for Long Branch, a fashionable watering place on the coast north of Atlantic City. The mayor would spend the entire month there and return to the city only for brief visits to attend to urgent business.
At that safe distance he would probably read in the papers an account of the Total Abstinence Beneficial Societies, who planned to turn out in full force on the Fourth, singing and praying in front of saloons; and of the meeting at Independence Square of Temperance Blessing, a group which had scheduled, in addition to a reading of the Declaration of Independence, the recitation by two young children of poems entitled "The Inebriate's Ladder" and "The Drunkard's Tomb."
He was also likely to note an advertisement which the advocates of prohibition frequently inserted in the Public Ledger, a newspaper run by the mayor's friend William V. McKean. It drew attention to "Buttermilk, the great summer drink," and provided an address where that refreshing beverage could be obtained.
The mayor had been mildly surprised recently when the Ledger took issue with a different type of prohibition, that against bathing in the city's rivers. Only a few days earlier, when city police arrested twenty-one persons in the Schuylkill, the paper had come to their defense, stating that bathing and swimming were good exercise and that there ought to be as little hindrance to them as possible, especially as the authorities had failed to provide the means for those who had no facilities at home. The Ledger editorial contended that a dip in the river could not be technically prohibited if there were no "exposure of the person," and advised that "a first-rate bathing dress" could be made by taking an old pair of pantaloons and cutting the legs off a little above the knees.
In the same issue, the Ledger printed a notice from Police Chief Kennard H. Jones in which he declared that the ordinance prohibiting the firing of crackers, rockets, and other fireworks would be rigidly enforced during the holiday weekend. Parents and guardians were earnestly requested to see that those under their control obeyed the ordinance.
These were minor dampers on the buoyant mood which prevailed. Despite the police chief's notice, crackers and rockets were on sale throughout the day. At Fairmount Park, moreover, the schedule provided for a Grand Oriental Illumination and a Grand Balloon Ascension, as well as a Grand Fourth of July Picnic.
The city's regular entertainments would be open to the public. At Mortimer's Varieties the "gifted, sensational actress and daring equestrian" Miss Kate Raymond was appearing in the extravagant spectacle Mazeppa. Her celebrated Arabian thoroughbred Dreadnaught was billed as "the most beautiful and best-trained horse on the American stage." At Colonel Wood's Museum there was a Grand Harlequinade, as well as a Mysterious Turk and the Christy Minstrels. At the Grand Central Variety Theatre a "celebrated, sensational" drama entitled Ins and Outs; or, I'm There was on the same bill with a "champion ballet troupe, comprising 40 beautiful ladies." And at Fox's New American Theatre, at Chestnut above 10th, the "great serio-comic" Mademoiselle Zitella opened a program that included the first local appearance on stage of "LIVE INDIANS!" and ended with an "exciting drama" entitled Gettysburg; or, The Struggles of the Border, produced at "an immense expense with new scenery, effects, and costumes."
On Wednesday, July 1, a local correspondent found ample justification for advising the New York Herald that "the Fourth will be celebrated with universal spirit here." By Saturday, however, the weather had turned around, rain forced cancellation of the fireworks, and angry gusts of wind swept the subdued Centennial City. Still, it was not the wind or the rain which dampened the spirits of the populace. On July 1 a little boy had been stolen from his home and was not yet recovered. His name was Charley Ross and his plight had suddenly become the overwhelming obsession of the entire city. Soon that obsession would spread to the nation, and far beyond.
CHAPTER 2
Christian K. Ross, little Charley's father, lived with his family in Germantown, a fashionable, somewhat sleepy quarter within the corporate limits of Philadelphia but about seven miles from the city's heart. Settled in 1683 by German immigrants whose beliefs were akin to those of the English Quakers, the area abounded in reminders of the historic past. Near the Rosses' was the Chew House, from which Lord Howe, the British Commander, repulsed General Washington during the second year of the American Revolution. And on a ridge close by perched the oldest American "White House" still standing, inhabited by President Washington in 1793 and 1794.
The Ross house was on the north side of Washington Lane, which ran northeasterly from Main Street past the Chestnut Hill railroad station, a commuter line. It was only the eighth residence from Main Street, almost half a mile distant. The station lay across from the ninth. Each of the houses on both sides of Washington Lane was set well back from the broad roadway and enclosed in from one to ten acres of richly landscaped grounds. The abundant shrubbery and trees provided a good deal of privacy. Gardens and stables were in the rear. So imposing were these homes that they were often described as villas.
The Ross residence, on rising ground, was a handsome old-fashioned house built of white stone, three stories crowned with a cupola, and a broad porch on three sides. To the east, across from the commuter depot, lived the nearest neighbors, the McDowells. To the west, between the Rosses' house and the next, owned by a family named Kidder, a three-acre lot was overgrown with trees and bushes. Due to the dense foliage, neither the Kidders nor the Rosses could see much of the street in front of this area. Here the Ross children liked to play.
Their father at this time was fifty years old. He was born on November 6, 1823, in Middletown, Pennsylvania, and attended private schools in Middletown and nearby Carlisle. In 1838 he came to Philadelphia to secure employment in a wholesale dry goods firm, and eventually he set up his own business. In 1862 he had married Sarah Ann Lewis from Brookline, Massachusetts, who was of a similarly well-to-do background and, at twenty-eight, ten years younger than he. Their firstborn child died in 1863. Thereafter, however, seven youngsters entered the household in rapid succession, four boys and three girls. While raising this large family, Christian and Sarah found time to take an active part in community affairs. Sarah served on various charitable committees and Christian gave of his energies to his political party (Republican) and to his church (Methodist), for which he taught a Bible class. The Rosses were "well thought of."
Now in 1874, the family had already begun dispersing for the summer. On Friday, June 26, the two eldest boys, Stoughton and Harry, had left to spend the summer vacation with their paternal grandmother in Middletown. On the same day Mrs. Ross, in delicate health, which had been lately further impaired by worry over her husband's recent business reverses, left for Atlantic City accompanied by her eldest daughter Sophia. She had promised her youngest sons Walter and Charley that in two weeks she would send Sophia home and have them come to join her at the seaside.
On Wednesday, July 1, the boys were at home, along with the family's two younger daughters, Marian Kimball and Anne Christine. Also about the house were Bridget and Sarah Kerr, in charge of the children; Mary, the cook; and Tom Foley, the gardener. Before the father left for his business at 304 Market Street in downtown Philadelphia, the children asked him for money to buy firecrackers for the Fourth. So anxious were they to be well prepared in advance that Christian Ross promised he would get a carload of seashore sand that very day. The crackers could then be fired into the sand, meeting Police Chief Jones's ordinance against them halfway, and eliminating worries about setting fire to the house.
After Ross left to wrestle with the affairs of his dry goods concern, Ross, Schott, and Company, the household settled into cheerful anticipation of the forthcoming holiday. In the middle of the afternoon the children were given their baths. The two little girls and Walter, a boy of almost six, slight, with light brown hair and clear, intelligent eyes, needed little help in dressing. Charley, the youngest, who had just celebrated his fourth birthday on May 4, wore a common uniform of the day, a brown linen suit with a short, full pleated skirt and overpants of the same length. Sarah Kerr helped him with it, and into a pair of blue and white stockings and black laced shoes, size seven. Because it was a bright sunny day, she handed him a broad-brimmed straw hat with a decorative band of ribbon.
The family was amused by little Charley's desire to be neat and trim, but this was only one of the reasons he was a household favorite. He was a beautiful child, straight and well formed, with prettily dimpled hands, a sturdy neck, and a comely rounded face, with another dimple highlighting the chin. The eyes were brown, with very light eyebrows under a broad forehead. Silky flaxen hair curled easily in ringlets and was worn long, forming a cowlick on the left side when parted. Clear white skin testified to a good constitution — little Charley had seldom been sick after six months of age. The boy's beauty was complemented by a depending, confiding nature. After they had finished dressing, Charley took Walter's hand as the two ran out into the lane. Like his older brothers, Walter was always eager to please Charley, to play with him when he stood waiting for them as they returned from school, or to have him sleep in the same room. Walter knew, too, that Charley was sensitive, that a harsh word could cause the tears to gather in his eyes and easily overflow. Perhaps most endearing was a certain quaintness about the young boy. While he spoke plainly, he was shy and retiring, his walk and manner often so deliberate and old-fashioned that the family called him "little William Penn." Above all, he was uneasy with strangers and had the habit of using a hand to shield his eyes when approached by an unfamiliar figure.
CHAPTER 3
Now, in the drowsy late afternoon of July 1, little Charley Ross paused to raise his arm in the characteristic gesture. A horse and buggy had drawn up to the deserted area where the boys were playing. When one of the two men inside began to engage in idle banter, Charley relaxed. He recognized them. The previous Saturday they had come down the lane and given the boys candy. Walter had told his father about the incident and shown him a four-inch chunk he was keeping for Charley. Ross had been very firm, telling Walter that under no circumstances should he accept candy from strangers.
The next day on their way to Sunday school the boys saw the men on foot across the street, where one paused to shout a friendly hello. By Monday the effect of Ross's injunction had worn off, and when the men came by in their buggy, a one-seater with a collapsible top, Walter and Charley, playing store in front of the house, chatted with them and helped themselves to more candy. Almost directly opposite, workmen were putting up a house for the Boutilliers, one of several under construction nearby during the summer. Like the others, the Boutillier house was set some fifty feet in from the lane, and the workmen, absorbed in their activity, paid little attention to passersby they could barely see through the trees and shrubbery. Daniel Pruddy, a handyman working for the Boutilliers, heard snatches of conversation in the street as he went about his tasks. Through the foliage he several times caught a vague glimpse of the men as they offered the boys candy. Peter Callahan, the Boutilliers' young Irish gardener, also noticed them, especially the younger of the two as he sat in the buggy one afternoon, his head held down.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Little Charley Ross"
by .
Copyright © 1967 Norman Zierold.
Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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