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(Editor’s note: This is Part One of a two-part column by Lou Bernard.)
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It’s one of the most enduring mysteries of Clinton County’s history. Over a hundred years ago, a man disappeared and never turned up. And, though there were many theories, the case was never solved.
John Rohn of Keating Township disappeared on April 5, 1899.
He never turned up, and no explanation was ever found.
John Rohn was born on Jan. 4, 1930. He lived in Keating Township, in a town called Nelsonville. This was a small community on Keating Mountain founded by Seth Nelson, a local panther hunter, and mostly consisting of Nelson’s family and friends. In fact, Rohn’s first wife was Nelson’s daughter, Sally Nelson.
These days, there’s not much left of Nelsonville. If you drive up – and compared to some of the places I’ve seen, the road to Nelsonville is practically a four-lane highway – you can find the old cemetery and a few foundations and old wells. Seth Nelson is buried in the Nelsonville Cemetery, and so is most of the Rohn family.
John Rohn isn’t buried anyplace. There was no body to bury.
He was married three times. His first wife, Sally, died on March 20, 1875. Her obit doesn’t list any cause of death for her. She was 39 years old, so it had to be something like sickness or injury, but I haven’t been able to find out why she died. Less than a year later, Rohn married Kathryn Kryder. They divorced in 1882, Rohn claiming she was “too ugly to live with.” He married Isabel Confer, a neurotic who depended on a local doctor named Nevling for anxiety cures, and was still married to her at the time he disappeared.
Rohn was last seen climbing over a fence at the edge of his property with the intent of poisoning some crows. He never showed up again.
The police looked into the disappearance, and a private detective was hired from Philadelphia to investigate. As time went by, theories were created and rumors flew. (As I talk about all this, please bear in mind that I’m boiling it down somewhat. If I gave you all the details of the Rohn investigation, I’d be writing a novel, and I don’t have the attention span for that. Already as a two-part column, this is dragging out way longer than I like.)
Rohn’s family was investigated and more or less cleared. If they’d killed him for his money, they’d have wanted a body to turn up – as it was, they had to wait seven years before he was declared dead. Doctor Nevling was a suspect, and in fact shouted “John Rohn is after me” on his deathbed, but he had an alibi. Local man Gummy Schmoke was seen carrying a revolver that he fired around midnight, but that was more than 12 hours after Rohn had last been seen.
Rohn may have decided to ditch everything and run away from home, which is possible. But he was on foot, and not seen walking anywhere later in the day. How far could he have gotten? Rumors spread that he’d had a heart attack in the woods, or that his body was burned in the local mill, but they were never proven.
I can even make a case that a Giwoggle ate him. These days, the Giwoggle is known as the official monster of Clinton County. It’s a sort of werewolf-like creature with bird hands and horse feet, and the Rohn family used to tell stories about it to put their grandchildren to bed. Giwoggles have been sighted in Clinton and Clearfield counties. I don’t really believe that a Giwoggle ate John Rohn, but at this point it makes about as much sense as anything else.
There was someone else, though, who was never investigated, at least not that I know of.
Seth Nelson.
And we’ll talk about him in my next column.
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Lou Bernard is a Lock Haven resident with a keen interest in the history of this area. He is adult services coordinator at Ross Library and may be reached at ross13@rosslibrary.org or 570-748-3321.