This Memorial Day, Let's Take Time To Ask Our Elders About Our Idaho Past

By Christina Lords, Idaho Capital Sun

May 30, 2021

The dream came to him in 1977.

They came back to Chesterfield, Idaho, as old people, he and his wife. There before them, off to the east, the familiar brick schoolhouse was gone. But in its place, an interpretive center with information about the area’s earliest Native inhabitants and especially its eventual Latter day-Saints settlers, appeared.

In the dream, Chesterfield — and its small smattering of homes, stores, church, tithing office and amusement hall — was restored as it was during Hatch’s childhood in the 1940s and ‘50s.

When he awoke, he knew he had to write down what he saw in his mind’s eye. Then he knew he had to find like-minded people to make the vision a reality.

For in 1977, only a few dozen people still lived in his hometown. By then most of Chesterfield’s structures, largely built by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ followers who farmed the land, had been abandoned to the elements.

I’m forever grateful he did. One of those old homes, the town’s first brick house and one of the most prominent landmarks in the township, is where my grandfather and his 10 siblings were born and what they called home for decades.

Hatch and a dedicated troop of volunteers and donors are making sure our family home, and the other buildings still in need of repair, are restored to their original form.

After the coronavirus pandemic put a halt last year to Chesterfield’s annual Memorial Day Celebration that has been going on for decades, Hatch and my family members alike are thrilled the event is back in 2021 to allow Idahoans to catch a glimpse of this part of eastern Idaho’s rich history.

Hatch, the former president of the Chesterfield Foundation, said his dream came to him as he was working as a teacher in Auburn, Alabama.

He and his wife, LaRae, felt a calling to come home, help take care of the family farm and put his dream into motion. He met many interested parties along the way, including the Caribou County Historical Society, the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers and other old timers living in and around the area that were eager to preserve their history.

Since the establishment of the nonprofit Chesterfield Foundation in 1980, their efforts have yielded complete renovations of the township’s most prominent landmarks, including those in Hatch’s dream, and homes like the Muir-Butterfield house.

That’s where my great-great grandparents, Franklin and Jemima Butterfield, and great-grandparents Ferrebee and Ivy May Butterfield, LDS pioneers who moved north from Utah, built a life thanks to the provisions allocated to farmers and settlers in the Homestead Act.

It’s important to me that we remember that this land did not originally belong to my ancestors, but instead to the Shoshone and Bannock tribes that came before them. They were relegated to reservations established by the U.S. government to make way for largely white outsiders like my ancestors to raise crops, herd cattle and sheep and start families.

Chesterfield residents like my grandfather, who was born in 1930, said they remember occasionally seeing Native Americans on horseback in those Portneuf Valley hills.

Census records show my grandfather grew up with a rotating cast of characters, with as many as 27 other family members and laborers who needed hot meals and a roof over their head, making a home there.

When I called Hatch to learn more about the history of Chesterfield and its upcoming Memorial Day Celebration, I was surprised to learn he instantly remembered my grandfather, my great Uncle Mel and the rest of our family, especially their daily rituals of moving their cattle from a nearby corral to grazing pastures each morning and night.

“I remember going up there many times,” he said. “I would meet Mel there, and we would go over to the Brick Store with our nickel and buy the candy that would last the longest: Smith Brothers Cough Drops. I remember doing that for what seems like years.”

I have a lot of dear memories of my grandfather, who at 90 died of COVID-19 in December. He was the last living sibling who grew up in the “big house,” as my family calls it, and raised cattle and alfalfa near 24 Mile Creek.

My fondest, though, was attending the Chesterfield Memorial Day Celebration with him, my mother and my cousin in 2013. Something told me then we needed to take Grandpa back to his hometown and hear his stories before it was too late.

And hear stories we did. We learned how the children in his family slept four to a bed, how the big house didn’t have electricity growing up, how the girls weeded the garden and the boys tended the cattle, how primary lessons at the church in the winter could freeze your toes, how there were always dances to attend and shenanigans to get into.

The event features a 5K fun run, a picnic, an organized dance in the Amusement Hall, and, best of all, guided wagon tours of the township. The town’s shop and museum, which features photos of my great-great-grandparents, great-grandparents and even my grandfather’s first grade class photo, has so many facets of pioneer life to explore and learn from.

Many of the families who populated Chesterfield over the years have donated cherished trinkets and treasures to keep their stories alive.

My mom’s cousin, Kathleen Killian, is our family’s genealogy wizard, and she provided several of the photos of our ancestors to the museum to ensure they wouldn’t be forgotten. Her mother, my great Aunt Rhoda, loved picking wildflowers in Chesterfield and finding a quiet place to read. Rhoda Bennett died in April 2020.

“Back in the day, when they decided they were going to rebuild (Chesterfield), my mom and dad used to go up every Memorial Day,” Killian said. “They would take their motorhome, and they would park up there and volunteered. Dad, here he was in his 60s and 70s, actually helping — helping rebuild.”

Memorial Day has always been a time for our family to go fishing and camping in the Bancroft and Chesterfield areas, my mom told me, and, perhaps more importantly, it’s always been a time to recognize those who came before us by placing flowers on the graves of our loved ones in the Chesterfield and other local cemeteries.

Hatch knows just how important upholding those traditions and keeping family close can be. He hears it from visitors and descendants of the town regularly.

“That is a feeling we get that helps us relive what our ancestors experienced; it is a special feeling,” he said. “We can read histories. All of those kinds of things can move us. This is just another history, but it’s a material history that we can almost relive with them as we visit with each other. We can envision better how life was back then.”

Hatch said he thought he did a good job of asking his father questions about their family’s past while he was still alive.

“But today I’ve got another dozen or two that I’d like to ask him now,” he said.

What a better time than Memorial Day, when we pause to reflect on those military members we have lost in action, to set aside time and ask our elders questions we may never get to otherwise.

I wish I had more time with Grandpa to learn his stories, to learn our stories, especially since he was always so willing to tell them.

But I know he, and all of our other LDS ancestors, believed that families are forever.

The efforts to preserve Chesterfield are certainly material proof of that.

The Idaho Capital Sun, the Gem State’s newest nonprofit news organization, delivers accountability reporting on state government, politics and policy.