A lot of times, history is about mystery and the post "The Story Behind the First Ransom Note in American History" combines the two perfectly. It is a tale of a young boy, who was four years old in 1874, who was kidnapped along with his older brother, five years old. The older brother would return to the family. What resulted would perplex people of the day as well as us today as to what happened to little Charley Ross. The case resulted in the first reclassification of the crime of kidnapping from a misdemeanor to a felony by the state of Pennsylvania in 1875. The whole issue resurfaced after a resident near Germantown, near Philadelphia, found a set of letters. Not just any letters, but ransom letters! It remains unclear how this woman and her family came to own them, but the letters sold at auction for $20,000 (the same amount that the kidnappers asked of the Ross family in 1874) by a collector who wished to remain anonymous. Even though the collection made its way into the hands of a private collector, his main concern was preserving the history of Germantown and worked closely with the historical society to scan, exhibit, and preserve the letters.
Link:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2013/12/the-story-behind-the-first-ransom-note-in-american-history/
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