A 150-Year-Old Unsolved Mystery in Mercersburg

 

In 1909, an old recluse named David Cutschall died at the home of his son-in-law in a sparsely-populated spot in Franklin County known as "The Corner". On his deathbed, the 90-year-old hermit made a series of strange comments that left many scratching their heads, including a possible confession regarding the mysterious disappearance of an eight-year-old girl in 1869 who vanished in the mountains below Mercersburg. At the time of the girl's disappearance, it was believed that she had either died of starvation after wandering off or had been kidnapped by gypsies, but others believed until their dying day that David Cutschall had murdered the child in cold blood.

On the afternoon on May 20, 1869, Martha Jane Straley, the eight-year-old daughter of farmer James Straley, went missing. She was last seen with twelve-year-old Anson Hornbaker and a thirteen-year-old daughter of David Cutschall (variously spelled as Gutschall or Cutchall in some reports) crossing Cove Mountain on a road known as Gress's Path, a short distance north of Dunn's Gap. They were returning from John Zimmerman's Store in Sylvan, where they had gone to purchase some items for their parents. While ascending the mountain the three children stopped to sit and rest, when, for some unknown reason, a quarrel broke out between the two girls. According to Hornbaker and Cutschall, Martha ran away in the direction of home, but must have lost her way.

Although a large search party was formed, several weeks of searching failed to turn up any trace of the missing Straley girl. According to a description which appeared in the Mercersburg Journal on May 28, 1869, Martha was wearing a red calico dress, a dark-colored bonnet, and was barefooted. This led many to believe that she couldn't have wandered very far, yet, for some reason, weeks of relentless daily searching by expert woodsmen, hunters, and local authorities proved fruitless. It was as if she had fallen off the face of the earth. Her bizarre disappearance sparked hundreds of wild rumors but the prevailing theory, based on the lack of physical evidence, was that Martha must have been kidnapped.  

Searching Among the Gypsy Camps

The years following the Civil War were tumultuous. In Pennsylvania, thousands of men wounded on the battlefields were rendered unemployable, and each new day saw the arrival of thousands of European immigrants who had come to America to work in the coal mines and steel mills. Those who could not find work or permanent homes, citizens and immigrants alike, flocked to boarding houses, while others banded together and took to the woods and mountains. Gypsy camps flourished in every corner of the state, and whenever a child went missing, it was believed that they had been kidnapped by roving bands of foreigners, whose language and customs seemed strange, if not downright evil, to the locals.

On Saturday, July 10, 1869, a blind man by the name of Heagy was informed that a band of gypsies camping in Lewistown had been seen with a girl matching the description of James Straley's daughter. He traveled to Lewistown at once, accompanied by one of his sons, but returned home several weeks later empty-handed. On the same day, David Cutschall was told of another gypsy camp in Frederick, Maryland, and went there to see if he could identify a young girl who was traveling with them, but the girl proved not to be Martha Jane Straley.

At the same time, James Straley was summoned to Harrisburg to identify a child who was seen with a band of gypsies in the area. He, too, returned home disappointed and heartbroken. A similar journey was made by John Hornbaker and his young son, who was in the company of the missing girl when she was last seen alive on the mountain. The Hornbakers returned to Mercersburg on July 28 without finding any clues.

A Skeleton Found

On Wednesday, August 11, some young women from "The Corner" were picking huckleberries on Cross Mountain, just below the Maryland state line, approximately four miles south of the spot where Martha Jane Straley was last seen alive. Near a small stream known as Rabble Run the berry pickers spotted a pile of bones, but thought nothing of it at the time. They returned home, but their story caught the attention of concerned citizens, who went to Rabble Run the following Sunday to make a further investigation. They located the pile of bones, but there was no flesh remaining, nor any scrap of clothing. However, based upon the length and color of the hair, they presumed the remains must be those of the Straley girl. Near the body was found a large rock shelf, which the searchers believed must have served as shelter for the lost girl. Gnawed birch and sassafras branches were also found, evidence of a starving child's last meal.

A coroner's jury was summoned from Washington County, Maryland, and an inquest was held at the scene of the discovery. Death was believed to have been caused by hunger. After the inquest, the bones were gathered up and, on Tuesday, buried at Pine Grove Cemetery near Mercersburg.

Because of the lack of flesh on the bones, along with the lack of clothing, it was whispered by some local residents that the girl's demise had been the result of foul play. Surely, they said, the bones must've been stripped clean by quicklime or acid. How could a barefoot eight-year-old girl wander for miles through the rugged mountains of Franklin County for weeks while hundreds of skilled outdoorsmen were trying to find her? 

While the "official" cause of death was listed as starvation, the location of the spot where the bones were found raises serious questions. As you can see by the map below, to wander from Gress's Path to Rabble Run, one would have to traverse a populated valley bisected by roads and dotted with farms. The likelihood of a scantily-clad barefooted girl making this journey alone without arousing anyone's suspicions is slim. Why did she not stop at one of the many farmhouses along the way? Why did she continue to plow through the wilderness in a starving instead of sticking to a road? And, most telling of all, why wasn't a single scrap of clothing ever found?

By July in 1909, David Cutschall lay dying in the home of his son-in-law, William Eichelberger, who was married to David's daughter, Susan. It was initially reported in several local newspapers, such as the Franklin Repository and the Chambersburg Valley Spirit, that Cutschall confessed to the girl's murder, though subsequent editions of the same papers wondered if this supposed confession had been merely a rumor, or perhaps the workings of a sick old man's diseased imagination. It was known that Cutschall, a hunter who lived at the foot of the mountain, had once been a rather shiftless sort of fellow, holding a variety of random short-term jobs during his working years. Is it possible that he found the lost girl and transported her to the spot where her bones had been found for reasons too terrible to mention? Or is it possible that Martha was never found, and that the bones discovered in Maryland were from another person entirely?

Upon David's death on July 29, older locals who were still alive when the Straley girl disappeared penned letters to the local papers in attempt to "set the record straight". According to one source, the cause of the quarrel which ultimately led to Martha's disappearance was tobacco; the Cutschall girl who was with Martha wanted a smoke and ordered the young child to get some matches from the Gress family, who lived at the foot of the mountain on the Sylvan side. How the rumors of David Cutschall's deathbed confession got started is a mystery (although it's possible that his daughter Susan was at his bedside when he passed away) and to this day no one knows for sure what happened to little Martha Jane Straley during the final hours of her life.

There is an interesting side note in the story, however. When Susan Eichelberger passed away in July of 1912 at the age of 49, there were rumors that she, too, had been murdered. This proved not to be true; Susan died of typhoid fever.

Sources:
Mercersburg Journal, May 28, 1869.
Chambersburg Valley Spirit, June 2, 1869.
Shippensburg News, July 10, 1869.
Chambersburg Valley Spirit, July 28, 1869.  
Mercersburg Journal, July 30, 1869.
Mercersburg Journal, Aug. 6, 1909.
Mercersburg Journal, Aug. 20, 1869.
Franklin Repository, July 30, 1909.
Franklin Repository, Aug. 11, 1909.
Franklin Repository, July 9, 1912.