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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Marshall Field Biography FIELD, Marshall (1835-1906). An American merchant, born in Conway, Mass. In 1856-60 he was clerk in Chicago in a wholesale drygoods establishment, in which he was a junior partner from 1860 to 1865. In 1865 he became a member of the firm of Field, Palmer, and Leiter, which, in 1881, became Marshall Field and Company. Under his direction the firm obtained the largest wholesale and retail drygoods business in the world, with headquarters in Chicago and branches in France, Germany, and England. He gave to the University of Chicago land valued at $200,000, with a gift of $1,000,000 founded in Chicago the Field Columbian Museum as a permanent repository for many exhibits of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, and bequeathed $8,000,000 for the endowment and maintenance of the museum upon the expressed condition that within six years after his death there should be provided, without cost to it, a suitable site. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. VIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 520. |