Hither General Martin Field brought the young, and, as surviving
portraits testify, beautiful Mistress Kellogg to be his wife. Here to
them were born "them Field boys," Charles K. (April 24th, 1803) and
Roswell M. (February 22d, 1807), destined to be thorns in their
father's flesh throughout their school-days, his opponents in every
justice's court where they could volunteer to match their wits against
his, and, in the person of Roswell Martin, to be the distraction and
despair of the courts of Windsor County and Vermont, until a decision
of the Supreme Court so outraged that son's sense of the sacredness of
the marriage vow, that he shook the granite dust of Vermont from his
feet, and turned his face to the west, where he became the original
counsel in the Dred Scott case, married and had sons of his own.

[Illustration: GENERAL MARTIN FIELD.
_Eugene Field's Grandfather._]

But before taking up the thread of Roswell Martin Field's strange and
unique story, let me give a letter written by his father to his
sister, Miss Mary Field, then at the school of Miss Emma Willard in
Troy, N.Y., as exhibit number one, that Eugene Field came by his
peculiarities, literary and otherwise, by direct lineal descent.
Roswell was a phenomenal scholar, as his own eldest son was not. At
the age of eleven he was ready for college, and entered Middlebury
with his brother Charles, his senior by four years. How they conducted
themselves there may be judged from this letter to their sister:

Newfane, March 31st, 1822.

Dear Mary: