On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 1, 1874, two men steered a horse-drawn carriage to a stop near the stone mansion on East Washington Lane in Germantown, Philadelphia. They were not strangers to the children who lived there. Over the preceding days, they had made a point of lingering near the house, chatting with the boys, handing out sweets, making themselves into familiar, welcome figures. On this particular afternoon, they had something better than candy to offer: fireworks. Four-year-old Charley Ross and his six-year-old brother Walter climbed in. Only one of them would come home.
The Charley Ross abduction became the first kidnapping for ransom in American history — a crime so without precedent that law enforcement had no framework for it, families had no language for its specific terror, and newspapers had no template for its coverage. It would remain the defining case of its kind for nearly sixty years, until the Lindbergh baby was taken from his crib in New Jersey in 1932.
Christian K. Ross had built his reputation as a prosperous dry-goods merchant and was well regarded in Germantown, then a prestigious community within the corporate limits of Philadelphia. The family's stone mansion on East Washington Lane reflected that success. It was the kind of household that announced security and standing. What it could not announce — because no one had yet learned to fear it — was that prosperity made a family a target.