The Family Histories Behind Princess Beef
Butterfield Brand (Cynthia Houseweart’s side of the family)
The Butterfield genealogy is traced to 1375, Yorkshire, England. My grandmother told me the origin of the name Butterfield is “beau champs” which is French for “beautiful field.” The roots of the Butterfield name are French, Scottish and English.
My great-great-grandparents, Amos and Rosanna Butterfield, and their four children moved from Ohio to northeast Colorado in 1886 as early homesteaders. Their homestead, in Phillips County, was only a few miles from Amherst, Colorado on the eastern edge of the short grass steppe. By that time, the buffalo were gone and cattle roamed on the open range. Annual roundups were held by the homestead ranchers.
Izzi and CeCe standing by the original Butterfield homestead in Holyoke, CO on a trip to see the land in the spring of 2017
Two of Amos and Rosanna’s children, Edward Ulysses, my great-grandfather (b. 1868), and his brother, Charles, were among these ranchers. In 1902 they established the B/B brand to mark their cattle. They built beautiful twin homes with the tallest windmills in Phillips County and controlled many sections of the Colorado prairie.
In 2004 with the help of the Colorado Brand board, I was able to figure out what the Butterfield brothers had registered as their brand. It was available for me to purchase at the time and is now featured on our ranch signage. Recently, when talking about Princess Beef, my father reflected, “nearly eighty years passed before part of prairie life, I knew only vicariously, returned to our family.” That, he said, “has left a warm glow.”
Edward Ulysses died in 1934. Eventually, one of his sons, my grandfather Edward II (b. 1914) and his bride, Dorothy, refurbished and moved into his parents’ beautiful home to work the ranch and raise their family. My father, Edward III, was born in 1936. They tried to continue ranching and farming on their inherited portion of the ranch but it was during the Great Depression. By 1938 life was too difficult trying to make it with their accumulating debt. I still remember my grandmother telling me how they just packed up and moved to Denver, where my grandfather became a plumber. She loved to reminisce about their home and ranch on the plains.
My father, Edward III, met my mother, Judy Helms, born in Iowa in 1937, while both were studying to be teachers at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. He became a high school biology teacher in Denver, where he taught for 34 years. From its inception in 1975 to its closure in 1988, my father was the director of the Grasslands Institute conducted on the Pawnee National Grasslands, which is located east of Fort Collins. Dad said the Grasslands Institute, which was sponsored by the Audobon Society of Greater Denver, “offered a holistic view of the grassland through the lens of ecology, geology, meteorology, archeology, art, music and the ranching community.” Although my father never ranched, he always has had a passion for the eastern plains where he was born.
Five Generations of Housewearts Ranching on the Same Property
In 1874 in Illinois, Ira and Mary Houseweart (my husband Ira’s great-great-grandparents) had a son, Oran Charles. Two years later the family moved to Kansas because great-great-grandfather Ira thought the farm ground was better there. When he was 7, Oran Charles became very ill with asthma, which plagued him throughout his youth. In 1898, doctors told Oran, then 24, he should go to Colorado for his health and survival. He left his family’s farm in Kansas, caught a train for Delta, Colorado and then headed for Hotchkiss. Great-grandfather Oran knew farming well and was hired on by several different ranches on Rogers Mesa outside of Hotchkiss. When he became healthy again, he sent a note to Mable Grove, his sweetheart back in Kansas, to come join him. She had been waiting for that letter and soon came out to Colorado. They were married and in 1910 bought a 20 acre piece of ground on Rogers Mesa in 1913. It is this acreage where our house is located. Oran and Mable pulled out fruit trees that were on the place and planted pasture. They milked a herd of cows and had five hundred chickens. The eggs they shipped to Telluride and the cream to Grand Junction.
Oran Charles and Mable had two children, Mary and Oran Grove, who was my Ira’s grandfather. Oran Grove (b.1913) loved farming and helping his father. Their family bought 60 more acres adjacent to their original 20 and began keeping their heifer calves and growing their herd. As their herd became too large for the pasture, the family acquired a forest permit for grazing. The permit was located above Paonia, Colorado. Oran Grove’s father, Oran Charles, died in 1936. Oran Grove and his mother continued to run the place. In 1940 Oran Grove married Margery Spore of Hotchkiss and brought her home to the ranch.
Oran and Margery had two boys, James and William (my Ira’s father.) Jim became a chemical engineer and worked in Globe, Arizona. Bill (b.1943) received his Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from Colorado State University in Fort Collins in 1967. He returned home after receiving his degree and helped his Dad with the family ranch. He also opened a veterinarian clinic just a half mile from the home ranch. Bill talks about his dad always working hard from early morning to late at night.
In 1977 Bill married Betty Bargsten, a young woman from Willits, California who had been born on a 12,000 acre ranch. Betty was in the Hotchkiss area staying with cousins and working as a vet tech when she met Bill. Together she and Bill grew the Houseweart vet clinic and continued running cows on both the Rogers Mesa property and the forest service permit above Paonia. Bill and Betty had two boys, Ira (b. 1978) and Cody. The boys grew up helping dad and grandad on the ranch and on the grazing permit. In 1994 Bill and Betty decided to reduce the size of their herd and sold their forest service permit and now keep their cows on the ranch.
Ira recognized early in his life he had a passion for metal work. He first learned to work with metal by welding on his family ranch. He graduated from Mesa State College in Grand Junction with a degree in welding and machine manufacturing. Always knowing he wanted to come back to the ranch, he did so in 2002 and opened his blacksmith shop in his grandfather’s barn located on the original 20 acres. Ira continued building his business while helping his dad and grandfather on the ranch. He speaks very fondly of driving his then 89 year old grandfather around the fields checking on new calves.
In 2003 Ira married Cynthia Butterfield (b. 1970) and they lived in a cabin on the Allen Ranch in Crawford, Colorado until his grandfather Oran and later his uncle Jim, who lived in the house across from the blacksmith shop, both passed away. It was 2005 when Ira and Cynthia moved into the house on the original Houseweart acreage. From here they continue to grow their herd with cows descending from the original Houseweart herd from 1913!
The fifth generation of Housewearts living on the original piece of property are Ira and Cynthia’s two girls Isabelle (b. 2004) and Cecelia (b. 2006.) The girls enjoy collecting eggs from the chicken house, feeding the goat, pigs, horses and turkeys. They love riding with dad in the swather cutting hay in the summer and helping with all the other ranch activities. When mom and dad are busy, Izzi and CeCe hang out with their grandparents in the veterinary clinic. They help walk boarded dogs and even watch surgeries. We have no idea whether the girls will live on the family place when they reach adulthood. But their childhood is filled with the extraordinary history and lore of four generations before them and this may entice them to stay when they grow up.