The Chatfields moved from Middlefield to Kankakee in 1858. The land was affordable and the growing season was nearly 30 days longer: more sunshine, less snow, and ample rain. They would construct their new home and tend their new farm in a place called Kankakee--Potawatomi for "Beautiful River." Nathan and Margaret may have learned about Kankakee from their cousin, William A. Chatfield, who had settled in Momence Township in 1844.

Long before the appearance of white settlers, the Potawatomi had made the Kankakee region their home, a rolling, largely treeless prairie landscape with a beautiful river thickly bordered with groves of oak, hickory, maple, cedar and black walnut. Fertile soil sloped gently to the water's edge in some areas, giving way to sheer limestone bluffs in others, abundant wildlife nearly everywhere. By 1858, Kankakee--60 miles south of downtown Chicago--had blossomed into an exceptionally large county of 16 townships, a population exceeding 13,000, and the site of a depot on the Illinois Central Railroad. Nathan had found what he had been looking for.   

Located about eight miles west of Kankakee on Highway 17, this is how the Chatfield looked in February , 1951. Constructed by Nathan Stoddard Chatfield and his sons between 1858 and 1860, the Chatfield House remains one of Kankakee's historic homes. Photo Courtesy of Kankakee Daily Journal and Kankakee Public Library Archives.