5th of 10 children of CHARLES HENRY CHATFIELD & NELLIE BELLE CHAMBERLIN
Education: Heald's Business College
Occupation: Diamond Match factory, Moore Dry Dock Shipyard WWII, Sears &
Roebuck, cook/housekeeper for Catholic priests
Died: at age 80; stroke

Married (1): Apr 17, 1926, EDWARD WALDEN McELHINEY, Chico, Butte Co., California
Divorced: Sep 15, 1936, Oakland, Alameda Co., California; grounds of cruelty
One child:
1. Roy Joseph "Buster/Mac" McELHINEY
1926 - 2004

Married (2): abt 1931, LOUIS LEE MOTE
Divorced
One child:
1. Mary Ellen [MOTE] McELHINEY
1931 - 1982

Two children:
1. living McELHINEY
2. living McELHINEY

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Mar 11, 1903: Rifle, Colorado Two years after Roy was born, Nellie "Nella May" Mary Chatfield came along. Nella May was estimated to be two-and-a-half pounds when she was born, so teeny her mother kept her in a shoebox warmed by the wood stove. She was her fifth baby, but her first girl, and Nellie Chatfield mollycoddled her tow-headed wisp of a child. Nella May and Roy were Nellie's favorites of all of her children, and she spoiled them both, terribly.

It was in 1920 that Nella May—at sixteen and the eldest Chatfield daughter—got a job working for the Diamond Match Company. Diamond Match paid good money for the day.

A clotheshorse as a young working woman, she had $5,000 worth of pearls and fancy brimmed hats, winter wool coats belted at the waist, calf-length plaid skirts and sashed tops tied to the side in streamers, cream-colored blouses with velvet ribbon running through the neckline, sheer ones cinched at the waist and coming down in a tunic, with a camisole underneath. Generous with her pay, she bought her sisters clothes too.

There was a group of free-spirited beauties working at Diamond Match. Dressed in their uniforms, bloomers tucked inside their knee-stockings, hats protecting their hair, they stood together boxing matches. Before the final wrapping they carefully wrote their names on small white cards and inserted them inside. Men wrote back to them in care of the match company, enclosing photos of themselves and their friends. They were pen-pal letters, but some of these correspondences went on for some time, and some blossomed into romances. When they could, the eligible young men arranged to meet the girls at the dance hall in Paradise, a half hour's drive from Chico. Everyone danced at the dance hall in Paradise.
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