The Last Camp at Chilkani: Frank G. Lenz Vanishes in Eastern Anatolia, May 1894

On the morning of 10 May 1894, Frank George Lenz, a 27-year-old Pittsburgh accountant on a 20,000-mile bicycle ride around the world for Outing magazine, left the Armenian village of Chilkani on the Alashkert plain in eastern Anatolia and rode westward toward the Deli Baba Pass. He was never seen on the road again. He had been on the road for almost two years, since departing Pittsburgh on 15 May 1892 on a pneumatic-tyred Victor safety bicycle on the personal commission of Outing editor-in-chief James H. Worman. He had crossed the United States, Japan, China, Burma, India, and Persia, reaching Tabriz in April 1894, and had crossed into the Ottoman Empire in early May with Trabzon, on the Black Sea, as his next objective.

When no dispatch reached Outing through June, and when his trunk and forwarded mail were reported in July still uncollected at Thomas Cook and Sons in Constantinople, the magazine commissioned a fellow round-the-world cyclist, William Lewis Sachtleben, to find out what had happened. Sachtleben spent roughly six months in eastern Anatolia in 1895, working with the Armenian local Khazar Semonian, the American missionary William Nesbitt Chambers, and the British vice-consul Robert W. Graves. He concluded that Lenz had been ambushed on the morning of 10 May 1894 near the Hopuz River, about six miles northwest of Chilkani, by a band of about six Kurds, and that the ringleader was a local man identified to him only as Moostoe (sometimes rendered Moostoe Niseh).

Shakir Pasha, the Ottoman official on a reform tour of the eastern provinces, had Moostoe and his men arrested. They escaped from custody before any trial. The US Minister to the Ottoman Empire, Alexander Watkins Terrell, pressed the Sublime Porte for years until, in 1901, the Ottoman government paid Lenz’s mother, Anna Lenz, an indemnity of approximately $7,500, with no admission of culpability. No body, no bicycle, and no grave have ever been recovered. David V. Herlihy’s 2010 archival reconstruction, The Lost Cyclist, broadly confirmed Sachtleben’s reading without being able to test it in court. The case is 132 years old and remains, as a question of judicial finding, unresolved.

Lenz and the Outing sponsorship

Lenz was born on 15 February 1867 in Philadelphia, the son of German immigrants Adam Reinhart and Anna Maria Schritz. His father died in his childhood. His mother moved to Pittsburgh, married another German immigrant, William Lenz, a Westinghouse machinist, and Frank took his stepfather’s surname.

He trained at Duff’s Business School in Pittsburgh, kept the books for a brass manufactory in the Strip District, and from the late 1880s rode with the Allegheny Cyclers, placing third in a 100-mile race from Erie to Buffalo in the autumn of 1888. In April 1892 the editor-in-chief of Outing, an illustrated American outdoor-recreation monthly, James H. Worman, hired him on a personal commission to ride a 20,000-mile circumnavigation by safety bicycle and to file photographic dispatches every month.

The machine was a Victor pneumatic safety, built by the Overman Wheel Company at Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts. Loaded for departure, with a 15-pound camera, 25 pounds of gear, the 57-pound bicycle, and the 145-pound rider, the rig totalled about 240 pounds. Lenz pushed off from the Central Post Office at the Smithfield Street Bridge in Pittsburgh on 15 May 1892, in front of an estimated 800 onlookers. A formal Outing-organised send-off followed in New York City on 4 June.

The route and the Persian leg

From New York Lenz rode south to Washington and Baltimore, then turned west across the United States, detouring through Yellowstone, and reached San Francisco on 20 October 1892. He sailed for Yokohama on 18 November, then rode the length of Japan from Yokohama to Nagasaki and crossed to China. From China he passed into Burma, and from Burma into British India, reaching Calcutta in October 1893.

He continued through Lahore and Karachi, took ship across the Persian Gulf to Bushire, and rode north through Persia to Tehran, which he reached in early February 1894. He arrived at Tabriz in April 1894. The Crown Prince of Persia received him there and a photograph was taken of Lenz and his bicycle in the palace courtyard. That image, dated April 1894, is the last known photograph of him alive.

From Tabriz he intended to ride to Erzurum, the principal Ottoman city of the eastern vilayets, and on through the mountains to Trabzon, where he meant to take a Black Sea steamer for Constantinople and home. His dispatches to Outing run through April 1894 and then stop. No letter, photograph, or filed copy has ever surfaced from the Ottoman leg.

Chilkani, 9 to 10 May 1894

Lenz crossed from Persia into Ottoman territory in early May 1894. The post road from Tabriz to Erzurum runs through a region whose Armenian, Turkish, Kurdish, and Yezidi populations were already under severe intercommunal pressure in the spring of 1894 and would, beginning later that year, become the setting for the Hamidian Massacres of 1894 to 1896. This is the bounding political situation in which Sachtleben’s investigation later took place. It is not an atmosphere; it is the record.

On the night of 9 May 1894 Lenz reached the Armenian village of Chilkani (also rendered Chilkanli or Chilgani, and known today by its Turkish name Guvence). The village sits on the Alashkert plain, also known as Eleskirt, immediately east of the Deli Baba Pass. He stayed at a farmer’s house. On the morning of 10 May 1894 he set out on his bicycle, riding westward toward the pass and Erzurum beyond it.

He was never seen again on the road. The next village on the route did not receive him. No traveller eastbound from the pass reported meeting him. By the end of that day Lenz, with his bicycle, his camera, his revolver, and an estimated month’s cash, had disappeared into the gap between Chilkani and the pass.

The alarm and Outing’s response

Through May and June 1894 Outing received no dispatch. In July, Thomas Cook and Sons cabled Anna Lenz in Pittsburgh that her son’s forwarded trunk and accumulated mail had been waiting in their Constantinople office and had not been collected. By 12 October 1894 American newspapers were carrying the story of the missing cyclist.

Worman, under pressure from Lenz’s mother and from his friends, agreed in early 1895 to commission a search. In March 1895, Outing engaged William Lewis Sachtleben (1866 to 1953), a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis who had completed his own bicycle ride across Asia between 1890 and 1893 with Thomas Gaskell Allen Jr., and who had co-authored Across Asia on a Bicycle (Century, 1894). Sachtleben sailed for Europe in March 1895 and continued overland to Erzurum.

Sachtleben’s investigation, 1895

Sachtleben spent roughly six months in and around Erzurum in 1895. He worked through three principal channels. He retained an Armenian local, Khazar Semonian, as guide and field investigator at Chilkani. He drew on the American missionary William Nesbitt Chambers, long resident in the region, as fixer and translator. And he had the support of the British vice-consul at Erzurum, Robert W. Graves.

His finding, published in Outing’s 1895 to 1896 volumes (27 and 28) as a serialised report, was that Lenz had been ambushed on the morning of 10 May 1894 near the Hopuz River, about six miles northwest of Chilkani, by a band of about six men. The ringleader was a local man identified to him only as Moostoe, sometimes rendered Moostoe Niseh. There is one named ringleader in the Sachtleben record, not two.

Sachtleben reported physical traces. Villagers had recovered, downstream of the killing site in the months after, a small hand-mirror, a small box broken to pieces, and scraps of shiny paper consistent with the wrappings of dry-plate photographic negatives. At Moostoe’s residence Sachtleben reported having seen rubber tubing he believed came from Lenz’s pneumatic tyres, and reported being told that the outer rubber casings had been deliberately destroyed. The bicycle, the revolver, and the body were not found.

On the strength of Sachtleben’s account, Shakir Pasha, who was then on a reform tour of the eastern provinces, ordered Moostoe and his men arrested. They subsequently escaped from custody. No trial followed.

The 1901 Ottoman indemnity

Alexander Watkins Terrell, the US Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Ottoman Empire (credentials presented 7 July 1893; recall presented 15 June 1897), accepted Sachtleben’s finding and pressed the Sublime Porte to act. His successors continued the pressure after his recall.

In 1901 the Ottoman government paid Anna Lenz an indemnity of approximately $7,500. The payment carried no formal admission of culpability and no Ottoman judicial finding of who had killed her son. No perpetrator was ever tried in any court, Ottoman, American, or otherwise.

The case in the literature

The leading modern reconstruction is David V. Herlihy’s The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, June 2010; ISBN 978-0-547-19557-5). Herlihy drew principally on the Sachtleben Collection (P-267) at the Seaver Center for Western History Research at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, on the Outing archive on HathiTrust, on the Terrell papers at the Dolph Briscoe Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and on the Lenz family record.

Herlihy broadly confirms the Sachtleben Kurdish-brigand reading, adds political context on the diplomatic correspondence and on the Hamidian crisis that bounded the investigation, and notes that Sachtleben himself, late in life, expressed doubt that he had fully reached the truth.

Evidence

Frank Lenz’s own dispatches and photographs to Outing magazine, 1892 to 1894, running from Pittsburgh to Tabriz across vols 20 to 24 (testimonial).
The July 1894 Thomas Cook and Sons cable to Anna Lenz reporting that Lenz’s trunk and forwarded mail were sitting uncollected in their Constantinople office (official-record).
Sachtleben’s six-month in-country investigation in 1895, conducted with Khazar Semonian as guide, William Nesbitt Chambers as fixer, and Robert W. Graves’s British consular support, and serialised in Outing in 1895 to 1896 (testimonial).
Physical fragments recovered downstream of the killing site at the Hopuz River by Chilkani villagers: a small hand-mirror, a small box broken to pieces, and shiny paper consistent with the wrappings of dry-plate camera negatives (physical).
Rubber tubing reported by Sachtleben at the residence of Moostoe and identified by Sachtleben as consistent with Lenz’s pneumatic tyre material (physical).
The arrest of Moostoe and his band by Shakir Pasha’s gendarmerie on the strength of Sachtleben’s report, and their subsequent escape from custody before any trial (official-record).
Alexander Watkins Terrell’s despatches as US Minister to the Ottoman Empire, 1893 to 1897, in which Terrell records his conviction that Lenz had been killed by Kurdish bandits, held at the Briscoe Center (official-record).
The 1901 Ottoman indemnity of approximately $7,500 paid to Anna Lenz with no admission of culpability and no judicial finding (official-record).
The Sachtleben Collection (P-267) at the Seaver Center, the load-bearing primary archive for Herlihy’s 2010 reconstruction (physical).

Hypotheses

(A) Murder on the road on 10 May 1894 by a local Kurdish band led by a man called Moostoe, near the Hopuz River, the Sachtleben 1895 to 1896 and Herlihy 2010 reading. For: six months of in-country investigation produced the named ringleader, Armenian villagers as proximate witnesses, physical fragments recovered downstream, rubber tubing seen by the investigator at Moostoe’s residence, Shakir Pasha’s gendarmerie arrest, Terrell’s diplomatic support, the 1901 Ottoman indemnity, and the Herlihy 2010 archival reconstruction broadly confirming the account. Against: no body, no judicial finding, the named suspects escaped before trial, the investigator was an outsider working through interpreters with no court power, Sachtleben’s principal witnesses were Armenian villagers in a region whose communal tensions were about to erupt into mass violence, and Sachtleben himself was later cited by Smithsonian Magazine as having expressed doubt. This is the leading reading.

(B) Murder by Armenian highwaymen or other regional actors. For: the eastern Anatolian post road was unstable and not every robbery on it was Kurdish. Against: no contemporary witness or investigator proposed this, and it is a hypothetical mirror of (A) with no supporting evidence; weakly supported.

(C) A riding accident in the mountains, with the body lost in fast water. For: a solo rider on a heavily loaded bicycle on a spring mountain road, with rivers running high. Against: the physical fragments recovered are not what a solitary drowning would deposit, no wreck was found on the road, and Sachtleben’s witnesses described a deliberate ambush rather than an accident; weakly supported.

(D) Killed by Ottoman gendarmerie or local authorities, a scenario raised in some Pittsburgh-press speculation in late 1894. For: rising anti-Ottoman sentiment in the United States during the Hamidian crisis. Against: no contemporary investigator or diplomatic source supported this; Shakir Pasha’s gendarmerie actually arrested Kurdish suspects, and Terrell, who was prepared to be critical of the Porte, did not propose it; weakly supported.

(E) Voluntary disappearance under another identity in Persia or India. For: the romance of a vanished American in Asia, attached in the same era to Ambrose Bierce, Ambrose Small, and others. Against: no documented post-1894 sighting; Lenz left an aging mother to whom he wrote regularly, a fiancee, Annie R. Leech, and an intended cycling companion, Charlie Petticord; his trunk and mail sat uncollected in Constantinople. The weakest of the five.

What remains unknown

Was the killing a robbery, for the bicycle, the revolver, and an estimated month’s cash, or a settlement of a perceived insult, as some accounts state Sachtleben heard from Armenian witnesses near Chilkani? Where, precisely, on the Hopuz River did the ambush occur? Was Moostoe the same man Sachtleben referred to in some renderings as Moostoe Niseh, and what is his name in Ottoman archival material from Erzurum, if any of that material survives? What did the Ottoman investigation file in Erzurum, if one was opened and preserved, contain? No body, no bicycle, and no grave has ever been recovered.

Moostoe, and the men Sachtleben named alongside him, was identified in a 19th-century investigation conducted by an outside journalist with no judicial authority; he was arrested by Shakir Pasha’s gendarmerie but escaped from custody before any trial. He was never convicted in any court. The Cold File names him because the documented historical record names him; it makes no finding of guilt.

Sources

Primary

Sachtleben Collection, 1890 to 1896 (P-267), Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
William Lewis Sachtleben papers, 1890 to 1895, Online Archive of California.
Outing magazine, vols 19 to 28 (1892 to 1896), via HathiTrust.
Thomas G. Allen Jr. and William L. Sachtleben, Across Asia on a Bicycle (Century, 1894).
Wisconsin Historical Society, Letter of Introduction for Frank Lenz on Outing Company letterhead, signed 18 May 1892 by George J. Schoeffel.
Alexander Watkins Terrell, US Department of State, Office of the Historian biographical entry.
Alexander Watkins Terrell papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

Secondary

David V. Herlihy, The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, June 2010; ISBN 978-0-547-19557-5).
Smithsonian Magazine, “The Unsolved Case of the Lost Cyclist.”
Adventure Cycling Association, “Frank Lenz: The Lost Cyclist.”
JSTOR Daily, “The Adventurous Life and Mysterious Death of Frank Lenz.”
Lewis L. Gould, Alexander Watkins Terrell: Civil War Soldier, Texas Lawmaker, American Diplomat (University of Texas Press, 2004).