100 years ago in North Idaho: Volunteers search for missing attorney, a former state senator

From our archives, 100 years ago

More than 100 volunteers were searching for Abner G. Kerns, a former Idaho state senator and prominent Wallace attorney.

Kerns had been missing for several days. His automobile was found abandoned at Prichard, Idaho, with his hat and coat inside. A logger from the Dollar Lumber Camp reported seeing a hatless and coatless man walking near the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River, but that was the only sighting.

Family members reported that Kerns had been behaving “queerly” for several days before his disappearance. A brother said he rode with him on an excursion to Murray, but Kerns drove so recklessly that the brother got out of the car and came home on the train.

His wife and friends said they had intended to check him into a sanitarium for treatment, but he never returned from the Murray excursion.

“Whether he is attempting to elude them in order to keep from going to a sanitarium was debated among his acquaintances,” the paper said.

From the wheat beat: Old-time grain men said wheat sales “were never so heavy in the history of the Inland Northwest” as they had been the last few days.

Ten million bushels of wheat had been purchased, with prices running over $1 a bushel. Most of the purchases were for “eastern delivery,” including much of it going to the export trade from Atlantic seaboard ports.