Good Old Days

125 years ago

The Commoner

September 20, 1895

Frank Hargis is in the county jail awaiting jury trial next month on a charge of grand larceny. Indications point to his pleading guilty to the charge as he does not deny the commission of deeds alleged in the complaint. Judge W.N. Ruby is the complainting witness. Hargis was the enengineer of his threshing crew. When the rains came on last last week, completing discontinuance of work, he moved the crew and machinery to his farm near Steptoe. Mr. Ruby on Tuesday received $270 on threshing account, and not caring to carry it about with him, he hid the money in his bed.

Later that day while several of the men were sitting on the bed, the bedstead broke down, and Hargis fixed it up. It was suspected that while doing so he found the purse containing Mr. Ruby’s $270.

The next day by display of inefficiency as an engineer, Harris secured a discharge and came to Colfax. Mr. Ruby discovering his loss, came to Colfax and applied to Sheriff Lathrum for assistance in securing his money and the arrest of the thief.

*****

Not Half of the Births and Deaths of the County Reported—Law Must be Obeyed or Violators Will Be Prosecuted: Dr. George S. Armstrong of Olympia, secretary of the state board of health, was in the city Monday and Tuesday, and made diligent use of his short stay in digging up vital statistics and endeavoring to obtain from Colfax physicians of the law creating the state board of health, and providing for the collecting of vital statistics, was not obeyed.

Under this law the state demands that reports of all births and deaths shall be made to the county auditor of the proper county, by the fifteenth of each month for the preceding month. This demand is made upon the attending physician, the midwife, undertaker or head of the family.

75 years ago

The Colfax Gazette-Commoner

September 21, 1945

Lee C. Lukins, 52, prominent Colfax citizen, well-known grain dealer and Legionnaire, died at 4 o’clock Saturday morning at the Bryant & Weisman clinic from injuries suffered about 7:30 o’clock Friday evening on the Schmuck Park athletic field when he fell with the saddle horse he was riding.

For some reason not definitely determined, the horse became frightened, reared and fell backwards. Mr. Lukins suffered seven fractures, including the spine, pelvis and sacrum, and internal injuries that a heart condition was unable to withstand. Told of the incident by an eyewitness, Laddie Lowe, 10, son of Mr. and Mrs. Jud Lowe, Sgt. Don Weitz, son of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Weitz, went to his home and called the Laverne ambulance.

*****

The smile with which he greeted his wife at a railroad station in Lewiston Saturday was soon taken off the face of Clem Kessel by Sheriff L.M. Parnell, who placed him under arrest on the charge of larceny by check.

Kessel, wanted since last July when Dean Woods, LaCrosse, cashed his $10 check on a non-existent bank of Garfield, pleaded guilty before Superior Judge M.E. Jesseph Monday and was given a sentence of one year in the county jail which will be reduced by half if at the end of six months he has reimburded a total of $140 to the six persons he admitted having defrauded on bad checks. Sheriff Parnell boarded a Northern Pacific train at Oakesdale, saw Mrs. Kessel get on at Garfield. At Palouse, he met Deputy Ora Rees and sent him on to Lewiston by car to provide a means of transpotting Kessel to Colfax. Mrs. Kessel, the officers said, is employed on a farm near Belmont and perhaps will see that her husband is released in six months’ time.

50 years ago

The Colfax Gazette

September 24, 1970

Charges of escape were filed Sept. 15 in Whitman County superior court against to parole violators who were reported missing from a work detail at the county jail Sept. 11. Deputy Prosecutor Lawrence Hickman filed the charges against Harold L. McArthur, Oakesdale, and Ross L. Hunter, 24, Asotin.

Sheriff C.A. (Mike) Humphreys said the duo had been assigned to painting walls along the stairway leading to the second-story sheriff’s office. Their discarded jail coveralls were found at about 9 p.m.

McArthur, convicted of first degree forgery, had been signed into the jail Aug. 26 on a charge of parole violation. Hunter, convicted of burglary in Asotin County, had been booked into the jail Aug. 21, also on a charge of parole violation.

*****

The horse—long forgotten as a source of “power” on the farm—is continuing to stage a comeback as a hobby animal, according to records of County Assessor Robert D. Repp.

The assessor’s listing of farm animals for 1971 tax collections shows a gain of 264 in the county’s horse population during the past year. Tax rolls will list 1,323 horses for 1970 as compared to 1,059 for 1969.

Gains are also shown in the county’s sheep and beef population, but swine, dairy cattle and poultry are on the decline—for the present, at least.

10 years ago

Whitman County Gazette

September 16, 2010

A 200,000-gallon tank of ammonium phosphate fertilizer burst at McGregor Company’s Mockonema manufacturing plant Monday afternoon. The rupture gushed approximately 100,000 gallons of the liquid fertilizer onto the ground and the across the Endicott Road.

The rupture occurred at 2:30 p.m., when employees were mixing ammonia and uric acid to make the ammonium phosphate.

No one was injured when the tank began gushing fluid.