Did you know?

Elijah Hiett Maxfield is the father of Ethel Mae Maxfield Chappell who is the mother of Glen Sherman Chappell, our grandpa. This is what the book Saddles and Spurs by Settle and Settle has to say about him on page 102:

Maxfield, Elijah H was born on Prince Edward Island, Canada, November 5 1832,went to Utah in 1851, and married Helen A. Tanner the same year. He served as a spy in Johnston's Army of Utah, drove stage coaches, was a Pony Express rider, and a member of Brigahm Youngs XY Express Company. He spent the last years of his life in Wayne County, Utah.

An article was written about downsizing in today's work force and the Pony Express, and it can be found at:

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/downsizing-1860s-style-lessons-from-the-pony-express

It mentions Elijah Hiett Maxfield. For the entire article, click on the link above. Here is just a blip from the article:

Attracting capable horsemen who were willing to risk death daily might have seemed daunting, but the Pony Express published ads that almost dared riders to join: “Wanted—young, skinny, wiry fellows, not over 18. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25 a week.” Riders were expected to cover a route between two stations, resting every 75 to 100 miles at a “home station,” then start back. The round trip required a rider to change his horse six to eight times. As suggested by the schedule for the first run, a rider was expected to make Fort Kearny, Nebraska, in 34 hours; and the mail would reach San Francisco after a total riding time of 240 hours. No excuse was tolerated, and the company motto was “The Mail Must Go Through.”

The Pony Express represented a classic example of a business made obsolete by technology. The losses in a single line of work—Pony Express riders—represented a 100 percent downsizing. But were they helpless victims turned out by a greedy corporation? Hardly. Raymond and Mary Settle have traced the history of most of the Pony Express riders in their masterful group biography, Saddles and Spurs. The Settles discovered that the rid ers’ stories are inspiring as much for what they accomplished after they were laid off from their riding exploits. Don Rising, for example, carried dispatches at the battlefield for the Union Army in the Civil War, gaining promotions to assistant wagon master. He eventually moved to New Mexico, where he started a mercantile and hotel business. Harry Roff became an insurance salesman who received promotion after promotion to become the Pacific manager of the Home Insurance Company. William Page, Elijah Maxfield, “Happy Tom” Ranahan, Robert “Pony Bob” Haslam, and many others stayed in the general occupation of driving stages or scouting; others (including John Frye, who, along with Johnson Richardson, was one of the first to ride the circuit) found work on ranches and in rodeos and circuses; still others, such as Martin Hogan, found themselves in demand by the railroads. Of the numerous riders that the Settles had information about, all found employment at levels above that provided by the Pony Express—with one exception, a hermit who retreated to a wilderness location. In short, the death of the Pony Express did not make a pauper out of anyone, and the downsizing that occurred only reflected the lower costs of faster transmission of information in other ways.