HORSES STUMBLED UP AND DOWN GERMANTOWN AVENUE IN 1874. Their shoes got caught between layers of cement and broken cobblestone and slid on uneven gravel. Travelers had complained about the road between central Philadelphia and Germantown since 1700, nearly twenty years after William Penn purchased the woods northwest of Philadelphia from the Delaware Indians. Through an agent, he offered the land to victims of religious persecution in Europe, and in 1683, thirteen families of Germans arrived. They lived in caves while they built homes along an Indian footpath, a trail leading eight miles uphill from the Schuylkill River. Settling toward the top of the ridge, the immigrants established themselves in their family trades as weavers, shoemakers, and tailors. By the turn of the century, Philadelphia’s society recognized the people of “German Town” as gifted artisans, and the community earned enough money to establish financial independence from Philadelphia earlier than other settlements. The townspeople’s pride, however, was frustrated by a common grievance: There were too many holes in the trail leading directly through town.
Over the next two centuries, the former Indian footpath evolved from a trail into a route, a road, and then an avenue. As each generation tried and failed to fill its holes, the thoroughfare became a historical marker. During the winter of 1688, a group of Quakers and Mennonites met along it to sign the nation’s first document condemning slavery. In 1777, General Howe’s men marched Washington’s troops down it following the British victory at the Battle of Germantown. Before the Civil War, runaway slaves found their way to it, resting at the Johnson house, Philadelphia’s only documented stop on the Underground Railroad. And in July 1874, two river pirates turned onto it after kidnapping two little boys from their father’s front yard, initiating the first recorded ransom kidnapping in American history.
Germantown’s neighborhoods branched off a two-mile stretch of the avenue called Main Street. Every weekday, hundreds of commuters passed these residential streets on their way to and from the city. After Philadelphia absorbed Germantown into its city limits in 1854, the state of Pennsylvania built a turnpike north of its boundaries, making Germantown Avenue an even more important connection between Philadelphia, its northwestern suburbs, and central Pennsylvania. Often, salesmen and charlatans turned off the avenue onto quieter streets to peddle contraband or homemade products at the doorsteps of Victorian mansions, colonial houses, and Gothic cottages—homes of the middle class and summer retreats of Philadelphia’s elite. In the early summer evenings of 1874, light winds rustled the trees and carried the scents of lilies and clover up to Main Street. Nurses bathed children, cooks prepared dinner, and groundskeepers tended symmetrical flower beds.
Washington Lane was one of six roads connecting Germantown to other neighborhoods, and on Wednesday, July 1, Peter Callahan groomed at least one property there. Earlier that day, local churches and clubs had hosted a picnic outing for children from the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Laughter had echoed through the streets around lunchtime, but before the dinner hour, only two little children could be heard playing outdoors. Just after 5:00 P.M., a black wagon turned onto what is now East Washington Lane. It was drawn by a brown horse with a rusted harness and a white spot on its forehead. Peter Callahan noticed the two men sitting in the wagon. The driver’s face was partially hidden by oversized eyeglasses and a sandy mustache. He looked about thirty, and he was a redhead. He wore a gray coat, a gold vest chain, and a tall, dark-colored straw hat. The passenger drew more attention to himself, mainly because he held a red handkerchief over his face. His hair was dark, and he was shorter and older than the driver.
When the wagon reached a brick wall about three feet high, the driver pulled the reins. Peter Callahan knew the children were playing on the other side of the wall that marked the front boundary of a family’s property. The passenger jumped from the wagon and dropped his red handkerchief. Callahan saw his face—a dark mustache, stray whiskers sprouting from his square jaw, a deformed nose. Callahan wasn’t sure what was wrong with it, but the tip of the man’s nose appeared to point toward his forehead. The man began talking to the two little boys, and a few minutes later, the brothers followed him into the wagon. The older boy sat between the two men. The younger sat on the passenger’s lap. As the horse began to trot up Washington Lane, the men spread a ripped, dirty lap cover with a red stripe across the children.
Callahan went back to work on the garden. He didn’t say anything. Groundskeepers were used to seeing strangers roaming the residential streets.