Field, Seth

title
esq.
first name
Seth
last name
Field
gender
male
birth, death year
1712, 1792
role
enslaver
race
white
location(s)
Northfield, MA  

Bio

Seth Field, Esquire (1712-1796) was the first of ten children born to Zecheriah and Sarah (Mattoon) Field. His parents moved from Deerfield, Massachusetts, to Northfield when Seth was about four years old. Tutored by Northfield's minister, the Reverend Samuel Dolittle, Seth attended Yale College and graduated in 1732 when he was 20 years old. Field became a prosperous farmer, served for many years as town treasurer and town clerk, and taught the Northfield school for 40 years. He actively engaged in military service throughout the colonial wars of the 1740s (King George's War, 1744-48) and the final French and Indian War (1754-1763.) In his 60s by the time of the American Revolution (1775-1783), he served in a number of town offices and was appointed to the town committee that reviewed the proposed Massachusetts State Constitution of 1780. Seth Field died in 1792, aged 80.

According to a well-researched early history of the town, Seth Field enslaved Ishmael Turner, "an African slave" who performed military service in the American Revolution in 1776. (J.H. Temple and George Sheldon, A History of Northfield, 1875, pp. 42, 557) In his essay on slavery in early Northfield, Phinehas Field relates that Field purchased Ishmael in Boston but does not provide a date. (Phinehas Field, "Slavery in Massachusetts," History and Proceedings of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Vol. 1, p. 483.)

Enslaved persons:

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