When Sim Hatch retired and closed his barber shop at Arimo in 1971, the Idaho State Journal printed a profile of his working life by its correspondent Fern Hartvigsen. Most of it belongs to Marsh Valley, but in the middle he went back to the years around the First World War, when he and his brother Abe ran horses in Bannock Valley and on Dairy Creek, over the hills to the east. Short items in the valley papers of the time, and the land records, add to his account.
From Moreland to Pauline
The Hatches were a Moreland family. Abe and Emma Miles Hatch had settled there in 1895, and Sim, born at Orangeville, Utah, was the fourth of their eight children, the Journal said. As a young man he took a job with a sheep outfit at Blackfoot whose stallions became his main charge, and afterward he married Teresa England, a Moreland girl.
He did not say when he and Abe came, but by the summer of 1914 they were in the valley. The Power County bills printed in the American Falls Press on July 30, 1914, paid A. M. Hatch, Sim Hatch and Jerry Hatch for road work with their valley neighbors. The next winter a valley correspondent reported that Noble, whose family had kept the Pauline post office, had turned a building next to the store into a barber shop:
Noble has changed his imaginary post office to a barber shop. This is an adjoining building to the store, when you call don't forget to get trimmed up by the tonsorial artist, Sim Hatch. If he can't fleece you just step in next door.
The Pauline post office had moved from the Nobles' to the Kowallis home in 1914 (see the firsts). Sim was cutting hair at Pauline nearly a quarter century before 1939, the year the Journal gives for the start of his barbering.
In June 1915 the Moreland column of the Blackfoot Idaho Republican said that Jennie Lindson had come home from visiting her sister, Mrs. A. M. Hatch, "of Arbon, Idaho." When the Press printed the county's draft registrants in July 1917, three Hatches were listed at Pauline: Jeremiah, Simmons Franklin and Abram Miles. Simmons Franklin is Sim. Abram Miles, who carried his mother's name, is almost certainly the brother Abe. Jerry is not named in the 1971 article, but genealogical records give him as another son of Abram Hatch of Moreland, so he was probably a third brother.
A hundred and thirty horses
The Journal covers the valley years in a few lines. By Sim's account, the brothers were thinking of horses first. They owned 130 head, and farming was a secondary concern when the two of them claimed ground in Bannock Valley, holding it at first only by squatter's right. That claim ended up with Ed Snyder, who bought it from them after they had improved it. Dairy Creek was where the Hatches later took up homesteads. Saddle horses made up most of the 100 mares they ran there, and in the same years the pair branched into cattle.
The papers show the families moving with the seasons. In November 1917 Jerry Hatch and his family went to Arimo for the winter. On January 8, 1918, the Pauline column reported that "Abe Hatch was out from Keever" to look after stock he had left on his ranch near Pauline, and in April the Press said the Hatch brothers had brought their families back in from Keever, where they had spent the winter. In October 1919 the Moreland column of the Republican had this:
The Hatch brothers brought their cattle up from Bannock valley Sunday.
The land records give dates the article lacks. In June 1919 Abe (as Avram M. Hatch) and Jerry B. Hatch received homestead patents for neighboring land on the Pauline side, in sections 4 and 9 of township 10 south, range 34 east; Jerry's later became part of the Lusk ranch. In 1926 Abe received a second patent, and Sim received a 160-acre homestead in Oneida County, followed in 1929 by a 480-acre stock-raising homestead there. All three lie in the high country east of Arbon around the head of Dairy Creek, which runs southeast toward today's Daniels Reservoir. They are probably the Dairy Creek homesteads Sim remembered, though no record read for this post names the creek.
Which Ed Snyder bought the squatter's land is not said. The valley had two: the Ed Snyder who married Hannah Evans and farmed southwest of Arbon, and a younger man at Crystal. An Edward C. Snyder patented a 280-acre homestead in 1921 in sections 3 and 4, next to Abe's 1919 claim, and a Charles Edward Snyder of Crystal registered for the draft in 1917. That points toward the Crystal man, but it is not proof.
Going broke
Sim said he and Abe also bought ground at Garden Creek. The depression that set in after the First World War ruined them both, and Abe headed home to Moreland. By November 1922 Abe was giving his address as Robin. He and W. E. Jordan of Moreland advertised in the Press that month for three young black horses and a mule colt, last seen "between Rock Springs and where Rattlesnake creek empties into Bannock creek." Sim stuck it out and ended up owning the Quill Farr farm at Garden Creek. The patents of 1926 and 1929 suggest the brothers kept their Dairy Creek claims after the hard times began, but when they last ran stock there is not known.
On this site: Horses and the first tractors, 1916–1922 and When Bannock Valley was cattle range.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, November 8, 1971, page 11 (section B, page 3). The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
Sim Hatch had retired and closed his barber shop in Arimo, the Journal reported in a profile by correspondent Fern Hartvigsen.
His barbering began in 1939. He trained at a barber school in Boise and then served an apprenticeship under Hal Ragan at McCammon. In later years he divided each week between shops in both towns, three days at McCammon and two at Arimo; the McCammon shop was sold roughly three years before he retired. Leaving the chair, he told Hartvigsen, would cost him more than it would cost his customers. A few young men he had barbered since their first haircut came home from military service or missions with long hair, having saved the job for him.
Barbering was only one of his trades; he said he had taken up "anything that was honorable." Sheep gave him work at every level, from herding and shearing to owning a flock, and he had also farmed and raised cattle and horses. The Portneuf Marsh Valley Canal Company and the Mink Creek cattle reserve both had him as a ditch rider, and the forest reserve had him on horseback for roughly eight years.
Abe and Emma Miles Hatch brought their family to Moreland in 1895, and that is where Sim, Utah-born at Orangeville, spent his boyhood. His first sight of Marsh Valley came in 1908, with three bands of sheep in his care that were shipped by rail to McCammon and trailed from there to Crystal Springs for grass. His next employer, a Blackfoot sheep company, kept him busier with five stallions than with its flocks. His marriage to Teresa England of Moreland followed.
His first claim in Bannock Valley, which the article also called Arbon Valley, was a squatter's right that he held jointly with his brother Abe. Their 130 horses, he said, were the real reason for it, with farming a distant second. It went to Ed Snyder, who bought the place from the brothers after they had made improvements. Homesteads on Dairy Creek came next for the pair, along with their first venture into cattle; most of the 100 mares they kept on that range were saddle horses. Garden Creek land was a still later purchase. Then the depression that followed the First World War bankrupted the two of them, and Abe moved home to Moreland. Sim stuck it out, and the Quill Farr farm at Garden Creek became his through a purchase from the Utah Mortgage and Loan Company.
Sim was widowed in 1933, and in 1935 Mable Brady, herself widowed, became his second wife. Each brought four children to the family, which by 1971 included 36 grandchildren and 38 great-grandchildren. Mable owned the flour mill and elevator at Arimo, and Sim managed them for a period after the marriage. The couple also went into Shetland ponies together; their buying trips reached as far as Texas, and they built up their herd with a small registered black stallion and with the entire string of a pony-ride business at Vernal, Utah, which they bought out. Their Shetland years ended in 1962 with the sale of the remaining ponies to a Dillon, Montana, family. The Hatches made their home in Arimo in 1971, and Sim was still gardening.
Sources
- Idaho State Journal, November 8, 1971, page 11
- American Falls Press, July 30, 1914, page 2
- American Falls Press, February 4, 1915, page 5
- Idaho Republican, June 11, 1915, page 5
- American Falls Press, July 10, 1917, page 8
- American Falls Press, November 9, 1917, page 8
- American Falls Press, January 8, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, April 9, 1918, page 3
- Idaho Republican, October 3, 1919, page 2
- American Falls Press, November 16, 1922, page 5
- Homestead patent to Avram M. Hatch, June 3, 1919 (IDBL 0030417)
- Homestead patent to Jerry B. Hatch, June 3, 1919 (IDBL 0030418)
- Homestead patent to Edward C. Snyder, May 19, 1921 (IDBL 0030501)
- Homestead patent to Simmons F. Hatch, January 14, 1926 (IDBL 0030409)
- Homestead patent to Abram M. Hatch, May 6, 1926 (IDBL 0030746)
- Stock-raising homestead patent to Simmons F. Hatch, November 18, 1929 (IDBL 0035142)