Roswell Field

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Roswell Martin Field
Member of the Vermont House of Representatives from Newfane
In office
1835–1837
Succeeded byJames Elliot
Personal details
BornFebruary 2, 1807
Newfane, Vermont, U.S.
DiedJuly 12, 1869
St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Resting placeBellefontaine Cemetery
Spouse(s)Mary Almira Phelps (annulled),
Frances Reed (m. 1848–1856; death)
RelationsDaniel Kellogg (maternal uncle)
Children6, including Eugene Field
Alma materMiddlebury College
OccupationLawyer, politician

Roswell Martin Field (February 2, 1807 – July 12, 1869),[1] was an American lawyer and politician. He served on the Vermont House of Representatives. Field was one of the attorneys for the enslaved Dred and Harriet Scott and their daughters in 1853; as related to Dred Scott v. Sandford,[2] where he argued for the rights of African-Americans to earn United States citizenship. He was from the prominent Field family of Vermont.[3]

Biography[edit]

Roswell Martin Field was born on February 2, 1807, in Newfane, Vermont,[1] to parents Esther Smith (née Kellogg) and Gen. Martin Field. He was born in southern Vermont to a prominent New England family. Field studied at Middlebury College (class of 1822),[4] where he studied under his uncle Hon. Daniel Kellogg.

Field became a lawyer in Vermont in 1825.[5] He served in the Vermont House of Representatives from 1835 to 1837, and was succeeded by James Elliot.[citation needed]

Field had married in October 1832 after a very short period of dating, and his new wife Mary Almira Phelps was asking for a private annulment their marriage after it was not consummated.[6][5] Phelps then married another man in Boston within one month of her marriage to Field, and Field spent the next nine years in courts trying to legally prove his marriage was valid.[7][8][5] He lost his very public case in the Vermont Supreme Court.[5] He left his home state after dealing with his marriage humiliation, and in 1839, Field moved to St. Louis.[5][9] In 1848, Field married Frances Reed in St. Louis, who was also from Vermont.

Dred Scott v. Sandford[edit]

Main article: Dred Scott v. Sandford

Roswell Field was of no family relation to lawyer Alexander Field, who had worked on the Dred Scott legal case earlier, but they were friends.[2] In 1853, Roswell Field agreed to start work on the Scott case, pro-bono, and suggested a lawsuit in the federal courts under the diverse-citizenship clause, to allow lawsuits between parties who are residents of different states.[2]

Field had arranged for Montgomery Blair, a high-profile lawyer living in Washington, D.C. to serve as the defense counsel and argue the Scott's case before the United States Supreme Court.[2] Dred Scott was the slave of a United States Army physician, who had taken his enslaved servant along for prolonged stays in free territory. On Scott's behalf, Blair argued that the time the black man had spent in the free state of Illinois and in Minnesota, free territory since the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, therefore it made him a free man.

Death and legacy[edit]

Field died on July 12, 1869, in St. Louis, Missouri.[4][10] He had six children but four of them died in early childhood. His two sons became writers and poets, one was Roswell Martin Field (1851–1919), and the other was Eugene Field.[11][3][12] They all lived together in a house in St. Louis which is now a museum called the "Eugene Field House", or alternatively the "Field House Museum".[13][12]

Field was the subject of the biography, Dred Scott's Advocate: A Biography of Roswell M. Field (University of Missouri Press, 1996) by Kenneth C. Kaufman.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "Field, Roswell Martin". House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College. Retrieved 2023-03-04.
  2. ^ a b c d "Dred Scott Case, 1846–1857". Missouri Digital Heritage. Retrieved 2023-03-04.
  3. ^ a b Thompson, Slason (July 22, 2004). Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions. The Project Gutenberg.
  4. ^ a b "Necrology of Middlebury College, 1868–69". The Burlington Free Press. 1869-08-07. p. 3. Retrieved 2023-03-04.
  5. ^ a b c d e Lindley, Lester G. (October 1997), Review of Kaufman, Kenneth C., Dred Scott's Advocate: A Biography of Roswell M. Field, H-Law, H-Review, retrieved 2023-03-04
  6. ^ "Married". Vermont Gazette. 1832-12-18. p. 3. Retrieved 2023-03-04.
  7. ^ "The Wife With Two Husbands". The Evening Post. 1834-05-31. p. 2. Retrieved 2023-03-04.
  8. ^ "A Yankee Trick". North Star (Danville, Vermont). 1833-03-11. p. 4. Retrieved 2023-03-04.
  9. ^ "The Eugene Field House". The Civil War Muse. Retrieved 2023-03-04.
  10. ^ "Field, Roswell M. (Roswell Martin), 1807-1869". LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies | Library of Congress, from LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies (Library of Congress). The Library of Congress. Retrieved 2023-03-04.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  11. ^ "Eugene Field (1850 - 1895)". Denver Public Library History. 2016-09-24. Retrieved 2023-03-04.
  12. ^ a b "Field Family History". Field House Museum. 2015-09-10. Retrieved 2023-03-04.
  13. ^ "Field, Roswell Martin". St. Louis Historic Preservation, Mound City on the Mississippi. Retrieved 2023-03-04.

Further reading[edit]

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