MARSHALL

See also:

• FIELD (a word common to many West German languages, cf. Ger. Feld, Dutch veld, possibly cognate with O.E. f olde, the earth, and ultimately with root of the Gr. irAaror, broad)
• FIELD, CYRUS WEST (1819-1892)
• FIELD, DAVID DUDLEY (18o5-1894)
• FIELD, EUGENE (1850-1895)
• FIELD, FREDERICK (18o1—1885)
• FIELD, HENRY MARTYN (1822-1907)
• FIELD, JOHN (1782—1837)
• MARSHALL FIELD (183 1906)
• FIELD, NATHAN (1587—1633)
• FIELD, STEPHEN JOHNSON (1816-1899)
• FIELD, WILLIAM VENTRIS FIELD, BARON (1813-1907)

FIELD (183 1906)  , American merchant, was born at Conway, Massachusetts, on the 18th of August 1835 . Reared on a farm, he obtained a common school and academy education, and at the age of seventeen became a clerk in a dry goods store at Pittsfield, Mass . In 1856 he removed to Chicago, where he became a clerk in the large mercantile establishment of Cooley, Wadsworth & Company . In 186o the firm was re-organized as Cooley, Farwell & Company, and he was admitted to a junior partnership . In 1865, with Potter Palmer (1826—1902) and Levi Z . Leiter (1834—1904), he organized the firm of Field, Palmer & Leiter, which subsequently became Field, Leiter & Company, and in 1881 on the retirement of Leiter became Marshall Field & Company . Under Field's management the annual business of the firm increased from $12,000,000 in 1871 to more than $40,000,000 in 1895, when it ranked as one of the two or three largest mercantile establishments in the world . He died in New York city on the 16th of January 1906 . He had married, for the second time, in the previous year . Field's public benefactions were numerous; notable among them being his gift of land valued at $3oo,00o and of $1oo,000 in cash to the University of Chicago, an endowment fund of $1,000,000 to support the Field Columbian Museum at Chicago, and a bequest of $8,000,000 to this museum .