Candy From Strangers: First U.S. Kidnapping for Ransom
3 min readSep 2, 2020
On July 1, 1874, way before Amber alerts and the open acknowledgment of child trafficking, a four-year-old boy named Charley Ross from Germantown, PA, had the tragic distinction of being the first kidnapping victim held for ransom in United States history. Two strange men coaxed him and his eight-year-old brother, Walter, into their wagon with promises of candy (it’s purported that this is where…
