The fact that there's no U. S. Flag flying outside the Chatfield Post office has nothing to do with any Civil War sentiments of the area, says Mrs. Floy Kirby, postmaster. The rope on the flagpole broke a few days ago. She'll fly Old Glory again when she gets a replacement. She orders two flags every year along with her other supplies. "Come to think of it, though, they didn't have a flag until I got to be postmaster 26 years ago. And they didn't have commemorative stamps until I got to be postmaster. People around here didn't know they had but one kind." She doesn't know anyone who collects them, however, "I did for a while, but that gets to be pretty expensive."

It is a quiet day in downtown Chatfield, about an hour's drive south of Dallas, five miles off Interstate 45 on Farm Road 1603. Most days are quiet here. The central business district consists of Chatfield Store and the post office. Officially, it is rated as a fourth-class post office. They don't get much smaller than this without disappearing, which is exactly what happens every year in dozens of small towns across the country. But to its regular customers, it is a first class identity tag, proof to the world that Chatfield exists, that it continues to survive.

On down the road is the church - United Methodist. Up the other way is the old schoolhouse that became the community center after consolidation. There's a sign pointing the way to "Old Chatfield Cemetery" and a couple of hundred feet farther, another sign says, "New Chatfield Cemetery." Both look old. Actually, there aren't many signs in the town. None identifies the community center. And no need to put up one for the post office. Everyone knows where it is - 50 customers rent boxes at the annual rate of $2 per box, 50 more get home delivery on the rural route. Seldom any strangers.

Mr. Percy says he's been up for hours, driving his pastures, checking his cattle, seeing to business. He's dressed in working man's garb - matching gray pants and shirt, halfway between new and worn out. His high-top Redwing work shoes are clean but not shiny. Mr. Percy was born in Chatfield in 1896. His father [Robert Lewis Hodge] was born and died there. His grandfather, Robert Hodge, Jr., founded the town in 1852, on land he bought for $1 an acre. Mr. Percy talks about the town [that used to be] with cotton gins and black smith shops. He tells about the mysterious stranger who came and stayed day after day - no one knew anything about him. One day he went to sleep on a counter in the store, and three men rode into town, leading one horse. They went in and got the man and rode off. Nobody ever found out who he was or what happened to him. Then there were the Union soldiers who camped just out side of town for several days. "My granddaddy made a good town here. People moved away. But those here are about the best people you can find."

Byron Kirby comes in and sits down in an old kitchen chair. Like Mr. Percy, Kirby has spent his life - 66 years to date - in Chatfield. He makes it clear that there's been too much moving around and too many changes to suit him. "I used to know everybody around here. Now I don't hardly know anybody. Somebody lives over there just a mile and a half from me and I don't know them. They've lived there for two years". Kirby preferred the community center building as a school house. "They used to have a four-teacher school here, but now they're having to bus these kids plumb across the county now and that's bad."

Kirby went to the Chatfield school and he says " Teachers could whip a kid then and they did. They might not learn anything but they behaved. Mr. Percy's wife, Lucy, she was the best teacher they ever had up there. She could look at a kid and tell what he was thinking about."

Mrs. Kirby is the most recent in a long line of Chatfield postmasters beginning in 1867 with William Pigg. Local lore has it that before Pigg, someone rode horseback to Waxahachie "probably once a month." The unsorted mail was dumped in a pile and everyone was required to seek out the missives bearing his or her name.

Chatfield was surveyed once in 1975 [about closing] but people wrote letters to their senators and congressmen and Jim Gill [then County Judge] even called the postmaster general on the phone. You want to get people stirred up, just talk about closing this post office.

Mr. Percy takes his handful of mail, says goodbye to Mrs. Kirby and pushes open one of the two wooden screen doors. He walks the dozen steps to his much dented GMC pickup wherein he sits and reads his mail. Likely as not, Mrs. Kirby says, Mr. Percy will nod off. Then, after his short nap, he'll go next door to the Chatfield Store and eat lunch.

Notes by Barbara Knox:

"Mr. Percy" was James Persons Hodge. Although Chatfield was named for an Indian trader, Norman Chatfield, the names Hodge and Chatfield will be always intertwined. Captain Robert Hodge moved his family from Kentucky to "the point" in 1852, and lost no time in starting to build a town. Other family members soon followed, including three brothers, Josiah, Washington and William. Others were B. F. Lisman who married Josiah's daughter, Susan; Albert Hervey, who married Martha Joyner and Dr. Robert Phillips who married Cynthia Persons (the latter two were nieces of Captain Hodge). Lisman gained wide recognition for his craftsmanship of sabers during the Civil War. He was also a blacksmith and Chatfield's first store was Hodge and Hervey. &quotR. L. Hodge -General Merchandise" was for many years operated by "Dink" Hodge, Captain Robert's youngest son.

In 1858 Robert Hodge deeded the Masons and Oddfellows a lot on which was to be built a two-story building, the first floor to be used as a school. The school bell was another Hodge gift, hauled all the way from Galveston. Notices soon appeared advertising the Male and Female High School at Chatfield Point.

According to official records a post office was established at Muskete April 20, 1848. That name was discontinued April 24, 1867 and the name changed to Chatfield in October of the same year.

The Hodge's permanent home was not completed until after the Civil War. It was a two-story colonial type house, called "Hodge Oaks" which was destined to become a Navarro County landmark. Originally each floor consisted of a large hall, flanked by four rooms, each with a fireplace and oversized closet. Cedar logs, grown on the plantation, were hewn, pegged and tied by Hodge slaves, with lumber and windows hauled in from Jefferson, Texas. Mollie Hodge's wedding to Boling F. Marchbanks took place in the large downstairs hall in 1865.

James Hodge was not deaf when he returned home at the end of the Civil War, but a few years later, continued friction between father and son resulted in his again leaving home - this time to be gone for some twenty years. When he returned (after his father's death), he was deaf and white headed, described by his younger brother as a "strange old coot." He never married and devoted himself to caring for his mother until her death in 1901.

Elizabeth Hodge's last contributions to Chatfield were donations of land for a new school in 1896 (named the "Elizabeth Institute") and for a Christian Church. The original school building burned in 1930 and was replaced by a two-storied community center. This building which sustained extensive damage in a storm several years ago, is now greatly reduced in size, but is still the location for the annual Hodge Reunion.

No one named Hodge lives in Chatfield today, but visitors to what was once a thriving little community get a strong feeling that Captain Robert is still keeping an eye on his town.