Many Americans recognize the name Marshall Field. You might think of the famous department stores that bore his name, or perhaps the renowned museum in Chicago. But the story of this retail innovator goes much deeper, back to a small Massachusetts farm and a special building in his hometown – a gift that became his favorite. This is the tale of an extraordinary American, a man whose drive and vision built an empire and left a lasting mark on our nation’s history and the way we shop.
Born into a farming family in 1834, young Marshall Field quickly learned that farm life wasn’t for him. His journey into the world of dry goods began with a stumble, but through persistence and a unique talent for understanding customers – especially women – he began to forge his path. From a simple apprenticeship in a small town to dreaming big in booming Chicago, Field’s story is a testament to the American spirit of hard work and entrepreneurship, proving that with dedication, even the biggest dreams can become reality.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Today, many people know Field’s name because of his famous department stores, or maybe after the Chicago Field Museum bearing his name. But there’s a building in his hometown that less people know about but became Field’s favorite gift. You’re to tell the story of Field: Jonathan Boschen, creator of the documentary, A Gift of Prosperity. Let’s get into the story.
Name is Jonathan Boschen. I was born in a town called Greenfield, Massachusetts. I lived near Conway, Massachusetts. I’m a documentary filmmaker, and I’m also a local historian. And when I moved back to the area in 2014, I was out in the Boston area doing work.
A few times I had to go through the town of Conway, Massachusetts, and I remember Conway. You have this beautiful New England downtown area, a nice little colonial-style town, and then at one end of the town you have this triumphant, epic building which just stood taller than anything else. This building, which is a library, is very unusual. So I went out there, asked the librarian. I’m like, “You know, I’ve always driven past this place. What is this?” And she gave me a whole history of who Marshall Field was, and I just was like, “Wow!” I was blown away to think that he built this library for his hometown and contributed a lot to the department store business and to the Chicago area.
Marshall Field was born in 1834 to a family of farmers, and as soon as Marshall Field could walk and talk, he began working on the farm. By the age of six years old, he was driving cattle, milking kells, raking hay, and performing a lot of other chores that were commonly done by boys’ age. When he was about fifteen years old, he lost interest in the farm life. He probably just did not enjoy it. He had a higher calling, and Demeroy felt like he had a future in Conway, Massachusetts, so his father got him a job at a general store that was run by a gentleman named James Whitney. Marshall Field only lasted two weeks. Mr. Whitney told Marshall Field’s father, “Your son’s a well-meaning kid, but he has no business working in dry goods.” So Marshall Field returned back to the farm for a little bit, and then after 1851, he decided to give the dry goods venture another shot. A few years earlier, one of his older brothers, Joseph, left Conway for Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and Pittsfield was one of the largest cities in Western Massachusetts. Joseph relocated there and got an apprenticeship at Pittsfield’s leading dry goods store, which was owned by a gentleman named Deacon H.G. Davis. So Marshall Field went out to Pittsfield, talked to Joseph, and Joseph helped get him an apprenticeship at H.D. Deakin’s General Store. He loved to work, so every day of those five years Marshall Field and Joseph slept and lived in a small room above this store and took full advantage of the apprenticeship to learn everything about running the store. Marshall Field’s most common customers were the wives of farmers. It was through bargaining with these women that he learned how to buy, sell, and accurately judge customers and acquire unique skill of selling goods to women. He really specialized in it. He became extremely knowledgeable and what women wanted to buy. It could easily assist them with selecting merchandise, and this specialty caused him to cause many women customers to come directly at Davis’s store and specifically ask for Marshall Field’s assistance because he treated them probably with more respect as customers and not just as a farmer’s wife. He was doing stuff that was revolutionary, but he was a young man. I think he wanted to sort of explore the world a little bit more and heard about Chicago, Illinois, and how was becoming quite the newest boomtown for many people. His brother sort of gave him his blessings, and that year he did end up leaving for Chicago in 1856.
Chicago was a pretty young city at the time, and when he originally got there, he felt he had made the mistake of a lifetime. He couldn’t get an apprenticeship. None of the stores out there really seemed interested in his ideas. A lot of the buildings were crudely built; stores were sort of get-rich-quick type deal. Everything out there was just sort of growing. It was a very different place than what it is today. It wasn’t like Boston in New York City, which had been around for a while. In Boston or New York City, and there was just a lot of ambition out there, and I imagine a lot of people saw this as sort of a new opportunity to make a name for themselves, to hopefully have a store that would rival some of these other places. And because it was sort of midway through on the law of the travel routes, he had people coming from all over the place to settle there. So I think things were definitely not working out from the way he thought they were when he originally went out there. Fortunately, his brother Joseph came out to join him. He managed to get a sort of when as being an agent for him, I think, and Joseph approached Cooley, Wadsworth and Company, which was the city’s lead dry goods store, and Joseph introduced Marshall Field, and they must have seen something in him because they hired him for an apprenticeship.
And we’ve been listening to Jonathan Boschen tell the story of Marshall Field. And he grew up on a farm in the middle of the 19th century, and by the age of fifteen, he knew farming life wasn’t for him, and he tried the world of dry goods, where he failed the first time. But his brother Joseph, who would play a part in Marshall’s ascent, got him to go to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he learned he had a talent. He started to understand what women wanted. When we come back: more of what happens next with Marshall Field in Chicago with his brother Joseph.
Here on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the stories we tell about this great country, and especially the stories of America’s rich past, know that all of our stories about American history—from war to innovation, culture, and faith—are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that are good in life. And if you can’t cut to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale.edu to learn more.
And we continue with Our American Stories and our story on Marshall Field. Let’s return to Jonathan Boschen for more of this remarkable story.
When Marshall Field became an apprentice in the business of dry goods, he was given an opportunity to learn the business from the experts, to learn the trade and learn how to do things. He devoted a lot of time to that apprenticeship. He barely had a social life. He never went out drinking. People began to sort of know the Sam. I think his employers started to respect him a lot more. They didn’t just see him as another apprenticeship. They started to really pay attention to him. And because Marshall Field was very focused on the dry goods business, he was paying attention to trends. He was paying attention to how people buy, and he began noticing the coming Panic of 1857, which was regarded as the world’s first financial crisis at one, which was triggered by the United States growing at a tremendous rate, resulting in an overexpansion of our domestic economy and the decline of the international economy because more goods are being produced here in America and not as many are being produced overseas. But Marshall predicted the panic, and prior to its arrival, he successfully persuaded his employers to do away with the risky, unreliable credit system that was in use around Chicago. Cooley, Wadsworth and Company was one of the few stores that made it through the panic. Following the Panic, the store reorganized Cooley, Farewell and Company, and to thank Marshall Field, they awarded him a junior partnership. They were very impressed with him. People were becoming a know him, and they saw that he was a very talented young man. So with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Marshall Field was presented with new challenges, but his expertise in selling dry goods was recognized as more valuable to the Union Army than sending him off to be shot at. Soldiers needed uniforms; they needed sleeping materials, eating materials, decks of cards—in some cases—little things to help keep the army looking good, but also to help keep spirits high. If you don’t have happy soldiers, the chances of you winning, they’re not very good. They needed anything they could that would help them win the war. He was not personally responsible for the victory the Civil War. His contributions were important peace and the puzzle to help the Union Army declare victory. Every little thing that everybody did helped out, and this was how he hoped out with his patriotism and enthusiasm and selling dry goods. So after the American Civil War, Marshall Field’s career sort of hit a dead end at Cooley, Farewell and Company, and he had a vision. He wanted to be like the Big Store of Chicago, to have a store that was larger than any in New England. And for whatever reason, he recognized, “I couldn’t do that through the company end.” Why he needed to do to make that happen was start his own store. And he realized that he had a law of the experience by helping out with the Panic of 1857 and probably with the Civil War, which did boost his image. He said, “Now’s the time to do this, because I’m becoming more popular. I’m becoming the big name.” So he got word of a gentleman named Potter Palmer, who ran one of the Cooley, Farewell and Company’s big competitors, and around this time in 1865, his health was kind of declining, and his doctor told Mr. Palmer that he needed to get out the dry goods business, so he was looking to retire from it and take up a different trade. Marshall Field got word of it. He approached his friend, Levy Leiter, about taking advantage of this opportunity to open up a dry goods store, and they respectively sold back their junior partnerships to Cooley, Farewell and Company and joined Potter Palmer. Two years later, once Potter Palmer had shown them the ropes of everything and they were ready to depart, Potter Palmer respectively left the partnership, and the company was renamed Field and Leiter. Marshall Field was now basically one of the people running the company, and he had visions that he wanted to put into practice. He had come to know how to treat people, and he had a lot of philosophies on how to sell dry goods to people and do so in a manner that was pleasant and respectful to the buyers. His several philosophies they put into place were “Give the lady what she wants” and “The customer is always right.” He allowed people to return merchandise, which was rarely done in those days. And one thing he did was eliminate haggling. He encouraged people to come in and browse his store without being annoyed to buy things. Some places you would go shopping and you were expected to buy something. Here, you could go in and browse, and you were welcome to just stay, look at things, try things out. And it was a pleasant experience. And all of his clerks were trained to be very polite and friendly because he wanted people to be comfortable shopping there. And with this hard work, he really began to build and even become more well known to the city around Chicago.
The Marble Palace was a building that Potter Palmer had built. Palmer admired what Marshall Field was doing, and he approached him and say, “I have this new spectacular building that I think would really add to the shopping experience.” And Marshall Field bought the place. The Marble Palace, as it was referred to around the Sea, was a massive, six-story, ornate building. The building opened on October 12th, 1868, and it was a huge event in the city of Chicago, an event described in the local newspapers as “a dazzling assemblage of wealth, beauty, and fashion unparalleled in Chicago’s history.” Customers—mainly the ladies whom those store was built to serve—were reported to have gasped at the Marble Palace, filled with cosmetics, furniture, and other household appliances. I imagine with the architecture, which had a lot of marble and was just, in those days, very beautiful. Look at people: these women must have felt like kings and queens just going in there. In addition to all of this, Marshall Field—the successful businessman he was—had matured out of his shy, quiet self into a more sociable person and mingled with new customers during the grand opening and the days following; and overnight, the store located at the Marble Palace had become Chicago’s most popular spot. He had everything going for him, and then on the evening of October 8th, 1871, he got word that this was about to change; that all of this legacy—this empire that he was building—was in danger. He learned about a nasty fire that started on the south side of Chicago that was quickly consuming the crude buildings of Chicago, Illinois.
And we are listening to Jonathan Boschen, creator of the documentary, A Gift of Prosperity, about the life of Marshall Field. And by the way, we learn here about the importance of apprenticeships. There’s so much for college there. He is learning from the experts and real prose and building himself up, not just a resume, but real work and life skills in the business of dry goods. By 1857, he had this impulse. He felt the coming of the nation’s first real financial Panic. His insight was to get his employer to get rid of the risky credit system they used. It probably saved the company. He was rewarded with a junior partnership, but Field wanted more. He saw himself; had a vision of himself as the owner of a big store. And of course, that vision—so often, as it happens here in this country with great entrepreneurs and innovators—it opens. It’s a marble palace filled with cosmetics, appliances, clothing, everything any woman would want. Field moved from shy self, the man of the town. But in 1871, there was news of a fire, and his life, well, was about to change. The life of this big city was about to change. When we come back: what happens next in the life of Marshall Field, this store, and his city.
Here on Our American Stories, and we continue with Our American Stories and the final portion of our story on Marshall Field. When we last left off, a massive fire had broken out in the city of Chicago, and all of Marshall Field’s hard work was at risk. Let’s continue with the story.
He got word that all of this legacy—this empire that he was building—was in danger. He learned about a nasty fire that started on the south side of Chicago that was quickly consuming the crude buildings of Chicago, Illinois. This store was his life; this business was his life, and he did not want to lose anything. So immediately he went down to the store. People were fleeing left and right. He was able to arrange a salvage operation with his remaining employees. By the time the fire had come to the building, it completely wiped out this massive, beautiful building. Fortunately, their jumping into action to save as much as they could did pay off. He was able to rescue a small percentage of merchandise as well as a lot of the company records to where they could reopen and drew hard work, taking risks, and the business having a vision. They were able to move back into another building a year after the fire, but for almost the next decade it was rough. There was stuff that probably would have caused anybody to give up if it wasn’t him. They moved around to several different locations because they thought at one point, because the fire destroyed one part of the city, that another part was going to sort of become the new shopping hub. So they moved to one part of the city, didn’t quite have. The Singer Sewing Machine Company built another building that was just as fancy and ornate as what Potter Palmer had, and he bought it, and fate and fire hit them again. Fortunately, from there, they were able to finally settle down and Marshall Field was able to finally pursue opportunities that he wanted to pursue. He could finally focus more on building up his business. His store really began to grow and grow during the 1880s and 1890s, and Field built a handsome, thirteen-story structure that opened to the public in 1893, had a cafeteria for luncheons, a gymnasium, a music room with live musicians playing throughout the day to help relax employees, and they even had a hospital. You know, if you worked for Marshall Field, you were going to be taken care of. And by the turn of the century, Marshall Field was worth what would be considered today $60 billion, so there were numerous investments that Marshall Field made. Marshall Field’s most notable gift was his contribution of one million dollars to he
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