Benjamin Hazard Field was an American philanthropist.
Background
Benjamin Hazard Field was born at Yorktown, Westchester County, New York. A descendant of Robert Field, who came from England about 1630 and migrated to Rhode Island about 1638, he was the son of Hazard and Mary (Bailey) Field and first cousin of Maunsell Brad- hurst Field
Education
He attended the North Salem (Westchester County) Academy, a well-known school at that time, directed by the Rev. Hiram Jelliff, and as a lad entered the office of his uncle, Hickson W. Field, a commission merchant in New York City.
Career
In 1838 he took charge of his uncle’s business, which involved much trading with foreign countries, and conducted it successfully for more than a quarter of a century. Having been joined by his son as a partner, he retired at fifty-one from commercial activities, remaining a silent partner and devoting the rest of his life to philanthropy in various forms, giving his time and thought unreservedly to every public enterprise with which his name was associated. Within a year he became president of the Home for Incurables, a New York institution that was virtually alone in its field.
To this undertaking Field gave his attention continuously until his death—a period of twenty-seven years, during which he was said to have been absent from only seven monthly meetings of the Board of Managers. He gave liberally for specific needs of the Home, and the chapel, built in 1885, was the joint gift of himself and his wife, but far more important was the personal care that he lavished on the institution, differing in no degree from the attention that a sagacious business man would give to a profit-making enterprise.
At the same time he was interested in the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary and in like agencies of healing. In 1880 he was one of a small group of public- spirited citizens who founded the New York Free Circulating Library, which twenty years later formed the nucleus of the circulation department of the New York Public Library.
At his death, in 1893, he was president of this organization. He worked for it enthusiastically for years, often at the sacrifice of personal comfort, when those who saw the importance of branch libraries on New York’s East Side were few and were compelled to get on with scant resources.
Field was a life member, treasurer, and president of the New York Historical Society and also gave support to the American Geographical Society and the American Museum of Natural History.
His philanthropies were never showy; he seems to have had nothing to do with any public cause that he had not seriously studied and in every project for which he assumed official responsibility he would not rest until he knew the details of organization more thoroughly than most corporation directors know what is going on in their own companies.
Field was a life member, treasurer, and president of the New York Historical Society and also gave support to the American Geographical Society and the American Museum of Natural History. He aided the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Working Women’s Protective Union, and the Sheltering Arms.
Connections
In 1838 he was married to Catherine M. Van Cortlandt de Pcyster, a member of an old New York family.