The Kidnapping of Charley Ross

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
In July, 1874, a four-year-old child named Charles Brewster Ross was kidnapped from the streets of Germantown, Pennsylvania, while he was playing with his older brother Walter. The story held the country spellbound, and spawned an enduring mystery.

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Song composed about Charley Ross titled "Bring Back Our Darling"

Early in the summer of 1874, Sarah Ross and her daughter Sofia had gone to Atlantic City. Her four other children were left in the care of servants and their father.

Two of these children were Walter, age 5 and his brother Charley only a year younger. On July 1, they were playing in the front yard of their home on East Washington Lane, in Germantown. A horse-drawn carriage with two men stopped only yards from where the boys were, and two strangers offered the boys candy and fireworks if they would ride with them in the carriage. It would turn out this was not the first time the boys had left with the two men, however they were always returned.

The children were taken to a store, where Walter was given 25 cents to buy fireworks inside since the 4th of July celebration was only a few days away. When he returned, the men and his brother were gone. Why the kidnappers dropped off Walter, who was only a year older is unknown. 

Five hours after being taken from their yard, police found Walter candy in hand crying at the intersection of Palmer and Richmond Streets. He was surrounded by strangers who had stopped to help the boy. Christian Ross placed an ad in the newspapers offering $300 for the safe return of his son Charley, thinking the child was just lost.

A few days later an ad appeared in the newspaper offering to return the boy if his father would pay $20,000 in ransom. Mr. Ross didn't have the money, and posted an ad in response saying he could only give them $300 but would try to raise the remainder.

Then notes came from locations in Philadelphia written in a semi-literate hand, with many misspelled words. The ransom amount would be equivalent to over $500K today.

The Philadelphia Inquirer first described the following ransom letter:

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 Mr. Ros: be not uneasy you son charley bruster be all writ we got him and no powers on earth can deliver out of our hand.

Washington Lane where the Ross family lived

The Ross family despite living in a large house in an upscale neighborhood, was heavily in debt due to the market crash of 1873.

Then another letter followed, threatening to kill Charley if any attempt was made to trace the perpetrators. Since he didn't have the money, Christian Ross went to the police and told them about the kidnapping of his son, and the ransom demands. Friends of the Ross family raised the $20,000, but the police interfered and instead offered the money as a reward. Due to this the story drew great attention throughout the country.

Families, especially if they had some type of wealth were terrorized to think their child could be kidnapped, and children were kept indoors.

P.T. Barnum sent Christian Ross a telegram that read: "If you will meet me at my home here before Monday I will pay your expenses both ways. I will pay a large reward and I think I can get Charley, if alive." Barnum offered to put up $10,000, his only request was that Charley would become part  of his traveling circus if rescued. Mr. Ross agreed only under the condition they would reimburse Barnum instead of having the child tour with him.

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Facsimile of Charley Ross ransom letter

After the initial letter, two more were received demanding money. On July 17, police arrested a man named Chris Wooster, which was later released when it was proven he had no ties to the kidnapping.

About 45 days after Charley was taken the Pinkerton detective agency became involved in the investigation, and distributed thousands of flyers with the boy's likeness. A popular song was composed titled, Bring Back Our Darling.

The police then found a lead which led to two notorious burglars, named William "Bill" Mosher (alias Johnson, Henderson, Hendricks, Smith) and Joseph "Joe" Douglas (alias Dougherty, Douglass or Clark). Mosher was a boat builder by trade, but was familiar to the police because of his criminal activity. Both men were known to operate in the area where the Ross family lived. The police could not track them down, but between July and November, 23 ransom letters were sent to Mr. Ross. ​Convoluted instructions for the delivery of the ransom were followed by Charley's father, but the kidnappers failed to appear. The day came when the communication stopped.

The reason police could not find Douglas or Mosher, is that on August 19, the men with their family in tow, left their home at 235 Monroe Street, Philadelphia and moved to New York, where Mosher had a brother-in-law named William Westervelt. He was formerly a police officer in the city. Douglas who was 20 years younger than Mosher, lived with him since he had nowhere to stay. He didn't have a wife or children, only siblings he was estranged from.

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Christian Ross House, east Washington Lane at Chew Street (Source-Germantown Historical Society)

In December, 1874 Judge Van Brunt's home in Brooklyn was burglarized. The judge's brother, Holmes Van Brunt who lived next door, realized what was happening, and armed with a shotgun went to confront the thieves. Upon entering the judge's house, he along with other members of his household saw two lantern lights go out, followed by two shots. They returned volley of gunfire into the darkness. 

The shots brought down the two men Philadelphia police had been searching for in the last four months. Mosher died on the spot, and Douglas barely clung to life. 

Those with Holmes Van Brunt told conflicting versions of what the dying man said except that he denied lying. "It’s no use lying now. Mosher and I stole Charley Ross from Germantown. God knows I tell you the truth; I don’t know where he is; Mosher knew."

In one version he said Mosher killed the boy, and in another that Mosher knew where he was and the child would be returned unharmed in a few days. But Douglas died before saying where Charley was, if indeed he knew or what happened in the intervening months since he was taken.

​Walter Ross was brought to see the dead men, and he confirmed they were the men in the carriage. Mosher who had a malformed nose, called a "monkey nose" was easily identifiable.  (The cartilage of the nose had been destroyed by syphilis or cancer).

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While the bodies were lying outside the house of Mr. Van Brant they were looked at by a nurse in the employ of Judge Church of Bay Ridge. Here an extraordinary statement was made by the woman. She said:

 'Last July an attempt was made to carry off the son of my master, Mr. Church who was about six years old. The child had been playing on the grass, and when I went out to look for him I found he could not be seen. I heard he was walking on the road with a strange man, and I went up to see who it was thinking it was some neighbor who knew the child. I found he was in company of a strange man, and I immediately took the child away.'

She insisted that the body of Mosher was that of the man she had seen with the child on that occasion, whom she had never seen before nor since.

Cockenoe Island lighthouse c.1906

The bodies of both thieves were delivered to the morgue with the following inscription: "Joseph DOUGLAS, died December 14, 1874, in his 29th year. Wm. M. MOSHER, died December 14, 1874, in his 53d year." Coroner Jones issued a certificate for the burial. Both men were buried next to each other in Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn. There were no prayers said over them, and only William Westervelt attended the burial. The undertaker, Mr. Munn said Charley would soon be found now that the men were buried, however he never specified how he knew this.

Mrs. Mosher was then located, and while she admitted that she was aware of the fact that her husband kidnapped Charley Ross, she insisted that she did not know where he was concealed. 

The days passed and Charley Ross was not returned.

The next to come under suspicion was William Westervelt, the former policeman and Bill Mosher's brother-in-law. He was arrested and tried in 1875 for the crime. While awaiting trial he told Christian Ross that Charley was still alive when Mosher was killed at the judge's house. Besides his familial connection to Mosher, there was no evidence to tie Westervelt to the kidnapping. Walter said that he was not in the carriage. Ultimately he was found innocent of the kidnapping but guilty on conspiracy. He served 6 years at Eastern State Penitentiary. He always maintained his innocence or having knowledge of what happened to Charley Ross. Once released he moved to the Lower East Side and died in 1890.

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The trial of William Westervelt

That same year strange stories were told about Cockenoe Island in Connecticut. The island measured 27 acres and is located in Long Island Sound.

It had the reputation of being haunted by the ghost of little Charley Ross. For years no one lived on it except parties who would stay to camp there. The story told and believed by those living in the vicinity of the island was that Charley's bones laid buried somewhere on the island. About the time the child was kidnapped two "hard-looking citizens" were often see on the island. They stayed in a house that years afterwards was abandoned but still standing.

The two men would chase off anyone coming to the island, however some people caught a glimpse of a little boy which the men were never far from. The men also seemed to make all efforts to hide him from being seen. Eventually the men's behavior raised suspicion, and three men who lived nearby went to the house. They were about to enter inside when one of the men blocked the doorway, whipped out a knife and threatened to stab the first man who tried to cross the threshold. Surprised at how hostile the man became, they left.

The two men were seen leaving the island, but the boy was not with them. Another party went to the island, and found the house deserted with everything inside removed or destroyed. No trace of the boy could be found. The men never returned, and it was told the child was murdered and his body buried somewhere on the grounds. The cellar was dug up but no proof could be found of any human burial.

​Then in 1886, an old man, poorly dressed rowed out to the island and went to the house. Some of the residents said he looked like one of the men who lived there during those years the child was sighted. The old man made some measurement of the cellar near the east wall, and then left, refusing to answer any questions. By then, everyone's curiosity was piqued and some young men went out and started to dig near the wall where the stranger took the measurements. They unearthed a human skull and some bones, but some of the townspeople said the bones probably belonged to the dog the two men kept during the time they were there. Other residents say the child fit the description of Charlie Ross.

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Charley's parents never gave up looking for him. Two years after his disappearance, Christian Ross  published The Father's Story of Charley Ross, the Kidnapped Child to raise money to continue in his search. Four years after the kidnapping interest in the case was waning, the book was republished and Mr. Ross began giving lectures in Boston.

Ross ransom letters c.1874

​In 1881, William Mosher, 14, son of the robber believed to be one of the kidnappers, was arrested after he tried to rob a boy of his watch and chain. The only reason he made the papers was his father's connection to the crime, and the reference made was that "it looks very much however, as though the taint in the lad's blood will prevent him from ever becoming a valuable member of society."

During all those years many cases of alleged sightings of Charley Ross were seen across the country, but it came to nothing. Mr. Ross spent a small fortune trying to find his son, but never could.

By 1900, Charlie's older brother Walter was a senior member of a stock exchange brokerage firm, and was even consulted on the Cudahy kidnapping case which involved similar circumstances to his brother's case.

The following year Senator Plunkitt of Manhattan introduced a bill to punish kidnapping of children under the age of 16 by imposing a 25-year sentence. He then told the senate in Albany about certain facts that he'd learned about the crime. He said the kidnappers hired a wagon in New York and drove it to Philadelphia in order to prevent a local businessman from identifying them. They rode 30 miles out of Philadelphia and there abandoned it, then took a train to New York. Once they arrived in New York, Charley was taken on one of Mosher's river boats, and finally to prevent the child from being seen they threw him overboard in the bay after tying an iron to him. The man in New York who rented the horse and wagon to Mosher never claimed his property for fear of being charged with complicity. Senator Plunkitt did not explain how he came by this information.

There was another version which described that Mosher and Douglas kept their horse and wagon in a stable on Marriot Lane (Philadelphia), but the stable was torn down and the horse and wagon, which was undoubtedly the one in which Charley Ross was carried away, disappeared about the time of the kidnapping.

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Nelson Miller (aka, Gustave Blair, Charles Ross) was proven through DNA he was a natural offspring of the Miller family

In 1934, Gustave Blair, 69, presented a petition at Maricopa County, Arizona to recognize him as Charley Ross. He claimed that after his abduction he lived in a cave. He was adopted by E.V. Miller who told him his real name when he was older.

Walter Ross thought Blair was a crank, however Blair's claim went uncontested and the court ruled he was "Charles Brewster Ross" in 1939. The family did not believe his story and he was excluded from inheriting any money or Mrs. Ross' estate estimated to be over $400K. At one point he moved to Germantown, and then back to Phoenix. He died in 1943 from influenza, still claiming he was Charley Ross. It wasn't until 2011, when descendants of Gustave Blair completed a DNA study that proved Blair was not Ross. Gustave was born as Nelson Miller into the Miller family, and was not adopted.

There were many who throughout the years, claimed to be the kidnapped boy they were: William Van Hodge, of Galveston in 1903, William Grant Eyster, of Pittsburgh in 1909, Charles Rogers, of New York and Mack Pointer of Wichita in 1922; George W Brown, of Philadelphia in 1923; Daniel Peters of York, Pennsylvania in 1925; Julius Coleman Dellinger, of Asheville, North Carolina, C.W. De Witt of Kansas City and WC. McHale, of North Carolina in 1926. Even a man from Los Angeles named Charles E. Ross thought he was Charley Ross. 

Without a definitive answer the fate of the little boy remains a mystery. The common admonition "don't take candy from strangers" is said to have come from Ross's abduction. The Charley Project, a major missing persons database, is named for Ross.

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Charley Ross, referred to as the Stolen Child

Christian and Sarah Ross outlived 4 of their 8 children: Winslow died as an infant in 1880, the same as William who passed in 1862, Augustus died in 1890 from typhoid fever at the age of 26, and Charley who was kidnapped in 1874.

​When Sarah Ross died in 1912, she willed the Ross Mansion at 9 Washington Lane to the Cliveden Presbyterian Church's Board of Trustees. They used it for services and Sunday school until 1926 when the structure was razed since it was so dilapidated, and a new church built in its place. Until then it still attracted tourists who would come to see the house where Charley Ross was stolen from. 

With the destruction of his family home, Walter Ross retired from the New York Stock Exchange in 1927. He sold his seat for a considerable amount of money, which turned out to be quite lucky since the stock market crashed only two years later. His older brother Henry had also become a savvy business man and left his widow a $1 million dollar estate upon his death in 1929.

Long after his parents were dead and buried, Walter Ross faced the death of his own son. In November, 1931, Walter Jr. was returning home in heavy fog, his car had almost cleared Campbell's Bridge when the steel girders buckled and 200 feet of the iron span collapsed. The vehicle plunged 35 feet into the Neshaminy Creek. The young man died instantly. An investigation by the state found a truck exceeding the weight limited had weakened the bridge.

Most believed that Charley Ross was killed, but there is also the possibility that Charley was kept by the family who was caring for him during those months Mosher and Douglas were trying to negotiate the ransom. After the death of the kidnappers, Christian Ross offered $5,000 for the return of his son, with no questions asked. Perhaps those who had Charley believed they would not be able to escape unpunished, and moved away with the boy, who in time forgot his origins.

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