The Miss Stone Affair: America's First Modern Hostage Crisis

by Teresa Carpenter

An account of America's first modern hostage crisis at the beginning of the twentieth century describes the experiences of Christian missionary Ellen Stone and her pregnant Bulgarian companion, the agendas of their Macedonian insurgent captors, and the efforts of American and other diplomats to resolve the crisis. 50,000 first printing.

Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime, History

238 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Teresa Carpenter is the author of four books, including the bestselling Missing Beauty. She is a former senior editor of the Village Voice, where her articles on crime and the law won a Pulitzer Prize. She lives in Greenwich Village with husband Steven Levy, a senior writer at Wired magazine and author of Hackers, Crypto and Artificial Life. Teresa is currently at work on an anthology of New York diaries for the Modern Library.

Reviews

[George Stenger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book club selection or I would not have finished. A very obscure book based on the extremely limited reviews. Details the kidnapping and eventual release in the early 1900s. Seemed to have exhaustive details that didn't add much to the story. It was interesting that after the release of Miss Stone and her companion, Katerina Tsilka is that neither woman condemned the action of their kidnappers and actually supported them.

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the detail account of the kidnapping of Miss Ellen Stone in 1901 in what was then called Macedonia.

Miss Stone was a missionary assigned to Macedonia. In September 1901 she started a trek on horseback over the mountains with a few other people. She was kidnapped by Macedonian revolutionaries. They also kidnapped another women, Katerina Tsilka, as a "chaperone". The revolutionaries wanted money to buy weapons to fight for their freedom from the Ottoman Empire. Mrs Tzilka, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, was pregnant. She gave birth with the assistance of her kidnappers.

Who was to pay for the ransom? Ottoman government since it happened in their territory? U.S. government since Miss Stone was an American? The missionary group since she worked for them? Or, the American public with donations once their heard about her kidnapping? Who was to negotiate with the kidnappers? It seems that everyone wanted to be involved so they could be the hero of the day. President Teddy Roosevelt even considered sending the new US Navy but to where? Were the kidnappers still in the Ottoman Empire or did they cross the border to land-locked (at that time) Bulgaria?

Six months later the ransom was paid and the two women and baby were released. The women refused to say the names of their kidnappers claiming ignorance. In fact, the kidnappers names weren´t public knowledge for another 20 or so years. How it became public I don´t know.

This is a story of diplomacy in action but it is also a story of egos and conspiracies. The aftermath of the kidnapping did not fare well for either Miss Stone nor Mrs Tsilka. Miss Stone wanted to return to the Balkans as a missionary but her organization denied her request. Mrs Tsilka´s husband, an Albanian-born American pastor, was believed to be part of the kidnapping scheme.

I know where Macedonia is located, more or less. But what was its history in 1901? The story did say but I was confused. Apparently boundaries change especially in that part of the world. Wss Macedonia ever liberated from the Ottomans? It took a couple of Balkan Wars but then Macedonia was divided between Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece. Yes, very confusing.

Interesting story.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating story of an American missionary in the Bulgarian/Macedonian portion of the aging Ottoman empire and her kidnapping by revolutionaries in 1901. Learned a lot about Bulgaria, Albania and Macedonia. I found the book so interesting that I read it non-stop in less than a day. Highly recommend to anyone wanting to learn about an area of Europe that is pretty obscure to most Americans.

[Jeff Jellets · Rating 4 out of 5]

What those two women will suffer can be imagined. May God guard them.

With The Miss Stone Affair, author Teresa Carpenter offers a compelling tale of America’s first modern hostage crisis – the kidnapping of an American missionary and her pregnant companion by a group of unidentified brigands in a disputed no man’s land between the failing Ottoman Empire and a fledging Bulgaria. While the story in and if itself is an interesting historical curiosity and eminently engaging on its own merits, the reader can’t help but be struck by the parallels between the taking of Miss Ellen Stone in 1901 to more modern global equivalents. The options for resolving the situation were appallingly limited in 1901, probably as much so as they are more than 100 years later in 2018.

In telling the tale, Carpenter deftly untangles the political factors that created the trigger for the abduction as well as the spider-web of political maneuverings that complicated its resolution. The major characters are well developed – including those of the captors (whose identities were uncovered decades later, offering a good bit of closure to the overall story) and there’s some pretty clear antecedents to what is now known as ‘The Stockholm Syndrome’ as both abducted women would become eventual advocates of their captors’ cause (even to the detriment of their personal reputations).

What is amazing is how much detail Carpenter is able to wring out of this store, playing part detective, part historian, leaving the reader quite satisfied with ‘the full story’ that is often missing from historical tales of true crime where the perpetrators are never positively identified. More importantly, Carpenter is well-balanced. The captors, diplomats and missionaries are remarkably well-rounded with a good-bit of justified credit given to the young, pregnant Katerina Tsilka, who was only seized as an adjunct to Miss Stone, but clearly pays a much higher price during the length of the ordeal and its aftermath.

Verdict: A good read from start to finish, The Miss Stone Affair is notable as much for the tale it tells as its sense of déjà vu, seemingly prescient of all the thorns, options and non-options that characterize even contemporary hostage taking, one of those lingering scourges that we just can’t shake off. Fortunately, for the captured Miss Stone and Mrs. Tsilka, the ending to their ordeal was a good bit happier than that of many of today’s equivalents.

P.S. Is there any book out there without a Salvation Army connection? In this one, it is two Salvation Army soldiers – sailors by trade – that jump-start the Protestant mission in Macedonian Salonica. This mission would eventually dispatch the missionary Stone to the countryside and her eventual abduction.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teresa Carpenter’s The Miss Stone Affair was a well-written and well-researched book on an incident in American history about which I had never heard. American missionary Ellen Stone, is ambushed by a band of armed revolutionaries. As a nod to propriety, they kidnap a female married colleague of hers, Mrs. Tsilka, who unbeknownst to them is three months pregnant. The women remain in captivity for several months, resulting in Mrs. Tsilka going through child birth with only Miss Stone and a local older woman.
Once the bounty was paid, Miss Stone, Mrs. Tsilka, and baby Ellen are released about 3 weeks later. Did Miss Stone then suffer from Stockholm Syndrome or was she protecting Christians while blaming others? We will never know!
Carpenter did an outstanding job researching and putting together a work that allows you to make your own conclusions. I wish more authors had her light hand!

[Diana Laffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extraordinary account of the kidnapping of an American missionary in Macedonia in 1900. Sadly the book gets bogged down in the prolonged negotiations between revolutionary groups, governments and missionary leaders. It would have been better to hear more about the experiences of the women. Nevertheless a very interesting true story.

[Marjorie · Rating 4 out of 5]

January book club..history of Bulgaria and neighboring areas! Need to do some research on history!

[Laurie Stoll · Rating 3 out of 5]

A non-fiction book about a woman that you can't help but admire.