The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-09-25
HE IS THE LOST
 CHARLIE ROSS, HE
 IS POSITIVE NOW
Cleveland Man Starts Home ward, Convinced of His Iden- tity by Inquiries He Made in PegtOWn, N. J.

On a passenger tram leaving NeW York recently for Cleveland, Ohio, was Charles Brewster Ross. who had come East a short while ago to see if he could identify himself as Char lie Ross, who was kidnapped from Germantown, Pa, on July 1, 1874. De- tectives searched far andw idle for Charlie until the death of his father Christian K. Ross, in 1897.
 The Cleveland man says he satis- fled himself, by his trip here, that he was the stolen boy- On the strength of what he learned he will make afH- davit in Cleveland as to his birth and percentage and thus complete his qualifications for license as pilot on the Great Lakes, where he has been a sailor for years.
 Identification had to be made among the claybanks of Pegtown, mining settlement in the township of SayrevilIe, N. J., near New Brunswick. It was there that Ross believes he was hidden by his captors, who judged rightly that detectives would never go to the place.
 Convinced the Police Chief.
 Pegtown remains now as secluded as in 1874, but the diggers have died off and the memories of the few sur vivors of that period no longer serve them as well as might be hoped. Ross had to rely on his childhood recollec- tions of the settlement. On his arrt- val in SayrevilIe he met Chief of Po- lice Bowler, who went with him through the Birch Creek district to PegtoWn.
 They talked with various old clay workers when they reached the set- clement without making much pro- gress. On Tuesday, when they went over again, Ross pointed out a clay pit in which he said he thought he had lived with a man and woman. Settlers recalled that the pit had once been used as a habitation. No one could say, OF did say, who had ever lived there.
 Ross explained to Chief Boyler that Acquaintance with his guardians would naturally not be admitted, for they were criminals. When he spoke of his memories of the old, hard life there the settlers warmed to him say ing he could never have imagined such things.
 They still shook their heads over his identity, for he looks younger than forty three, which would be his age if he is the Charlie Ross who was Kidnapped in 1874, at the age of four. The visitor said to BoyIer that if because he had lived a clean, healthy life, and the Chief was convinced.
 Resemblance Is Strong.
 One of the things that convinces SayreviIle folk is that Ross bears a strong resemblance to the pictures of the wavy-haired boy whose photo graphs flooded the country thirty nine years ago. The eyes, mouth and fore head are strikingly alike.
 Ross story, pieced together by years of search, is that his kidnap- pers were Mosher and Douglass, the burglars who were killed in Bay Ridge the same year, and John Hal enen, in whose care and that of a woman he was left in Pegtown. When his keepers heard of the death of the burglars they decided to flee. On the night they went Halenen shot the boy and showed his body into a trench believing him dead. He crawled out, was found and recovered.
 He started wandering very young but he says that twenty-three years ago he felt that he was Charlie Ross. Once he conhded that belief to a ship mate, who warned him to keep still, as several persons had already been committed to insane asylums for har- boring that delusion.
 About five years ago in Chicago he stumbled upon the man and woman who had been his keepers. They de- nied all Knowledge of Charlie Ross. He kept track of them and in 1911 he overheard them talking of the boy, Birch Creek and the claypit.
 When his ambition finally settled on becoming a pilot and it was necessary that he account for his percentage and birthplace he went to a firm of Cleve- land lawyers, who instituted a search for the claypit district. Birch Creek and Pegtown were at last found by a letter of inquiry the lawyers sent to a New Brunswick newspaper.