Missing-person history · Northfield shore marsh
Harold Herbert and the drift to Kiahs Island
Contemporary report · Search resolved · Island location approximate
When ten-year-old Harold Herbert disappeared during a weekend visit to Northfield in April 1927, searchers focused on the creek near his grandfather’s home. A drifting rowboat carried him farther into the marsh than they knew.
The weekend search
According to the April 26, 1927 West Atlantic City News, Harold was staying with his grandfather on Northfield’s Shore Road. He left about 10 on Saturday morning and did not return. Family, Northfield police, private detectives, and Atlantic City police searched through the weekend. Detectives dragged what the paper called Baker’s ditch, believing he might have drowned near where he went missing.
The paper reported that a small rowboat had slipped its mooring on Bakersville Creek. Wind carried the boat along the creek and across Risley’s Channel to the mudflats of Kiahs Island. Early Monday, baymen John W. Naylor and Raymond Somers found Harold in the boat. The county physician attributed his death to exposure. The article provides a coherent account of the search’s outcome, but does not quote a firsthand account from Harold of how he entered the boat.
What the map can show
The island is a mapped geographic feature south of Northfield, across tidal water from the mainland. A USGS-derived island listing places its center at approximately 39.3501, −74.5307. This is an orientation to the island, not the 1927 boat’s landing point or the place the baymen found it. Marsh channels and shore edges change. The record does not establish a public route to the island, so the marker is for understanding the geography, not a suggested visit.
The report names the creek, channel, and island. A historical chart, a search log, and a contemporary tide or weather record could refine the drift reconstruction, but a straight line between named features would not reconstruct the boat’s actual path.
Sources and limits
- West Atlantic City News, “Boy, Marooned On Island, Dies Of Overexposure,” April 26, 1927 — contemporary narrative of the disappearance, search, recovery, and physician’s finding; archive text is an uncorrected transcription of the newspaper.
- USGS-derived Kiahs Island geographic listing — approximate island location, not an event coordinate.
One newspaper report is the available narrative source for the sequence. Its account should not be treated as a surveyed drift route or an independently verified minute-by-minute chronology.