Cyrus W. Field
Template:Short description Template:Redirect Template:Infobox person Cyrus West Field (November 30, 1819Template:Spaced ndashJuly 12, 1892) was an American businessman and financier who, along with other entrepreneurs, created the Atlantic Telegraph Company and laid the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean in 1858.
Early lifeEdit
Field was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts to Rev. David Dudley Field, a Congregational clergyman, and Submit Dickinson Field, daughter of Revolutionary War Captain Noah Dickinson from Somers, Connecticut. The eighth of ten children, he was the brother of David Dudley Field Jr., Henry Martyn Field, and Stephen Johnson Field, the 38th United States Supreme Court Justice, among other siblings. When he was 15 years old, Field came to New York City, where he was hired as an errand boy in the A.T. Stewart & Co., a dry goods merchant firm. He entered a business apprenticeship, and earned fifty dollars at his first year as a storeroom clerk; his pay was doubled the following year.<ref name="Judson, I. F.">Judson, I. F. (1896). Cyrus W. Field, his life and work, 1819–1892. New York: Harper & Brothers.</ref> After three years, he came back to Stockbridge, but returned to New York later in his career.<ref name=gotham675 /> Field married Mary Bryan Stone on December 2, 1840, two days after he turned twenty one, and they had seven children.<ref name="Judson, I. F." />
Getting started in businessEdit
Although Field had many available career options, he chose business. This was a great move for Field. At first, he worked for his brothers, David Dudley Field Jr. and Matthew Dickinson Field.<ref name="Judson, I. F." /> In 1838, he accepted an offer from his brother Matthew to become his assistant in the paper manufacturing venture, the Columbia Mill, in Lee, Massachusetts. In Spring 1840, he went into business by himself, manufacturing paper in Westfield, Massachusetts. The same year, he became a junior partner in the E. Root & Co., a wholesale paper firm based in New York with responsibilities to oversee clients and conduct sales away from New York.<ref name="Judson, I. F." /> After six months, E. Root & Co. failed leaving large debts.Template:Citation needed Field negotiated with creditors, dissolved the old firm, and started a new partnership with his brother-in-law, Joseph F. Stone, registered as Cyrus W. Field & Co.<ref name="Judson, I. F." /> He stayed in business and was furnishing supplies for the Northeast mills, such as owned by Crane & Company, and buying the finished product wholesale.<ref name="ANB">Richard R. John. Field, Cyrus West. American National Biography Online, February 2000. Retrieved November 30, 2015.</ref> Through his hard work and long hours, the young paper merchant was able to repay the settled debts and succeed in business by servicing the burgeoning penny press and the need for stocks and bonds, becoming eventually one of the richest men in New York. In March, 1853, he repaid all previously cancelled debt due to insolvency of E. Root & Co. debts in full amount with interest, being under no legal obligation to do so.<ref name="Judson, I. F." /> Among the answers received, one particularly stated, Template:Quote
MidlifeEdit
Business earnings permitted Field to partially retire at the age of 34 with a fortune of $250,000 and build a home in Gramercy Park.<ref name="gotham675">Template:Cite gotham pp. 675–676</ref> In 1853, Field financed an expedition to South America with his artist friend Frederic Edwin Church, during which they explored present-day Ecuador, Colombia, and Panama. They followed the route taken by Alexander von Humboldt over 50 years earlier.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Church's sketches of the landscapes and volcanoes on this trip, and on a subsequent trip in 1857 with artist Louis Rémy Mignot, inspired some of his most famous paintings upon his return to New York. Field's list of "Places of Interest to Visit" in South America reflected his interests, including business interests: bridges, volcanoes, waterfalls, and cities, as well as gold mines and the emerald mines of Muzo.<ref name="Judson, I. F." />
Field turned his attention to telegraphy after he was contacted in January 1854 by Frederic Newton Gisborne, a British engineer, who aimed to establish a telegraph connection between St. John's, Newfoundland and New York City, started the work, but failed due to the lack of capital. Later that year he, with Peter Cooper, Abram Stevens Hewitt, Moses Taylor and Samuel F.B. Morse, joined the so-called Cable Cabinet of entrepreneurs, investors and engineers. Through this Cable Cabinet, Field became instrumental in laying a Template:Convert telegraph line connecting St. John's, Newfoundland with Nova Scotia, coupling with telegraph lines from the U.S.<ref>Jane A. Stewart. Great Americans of the past:Cyrus West Field. The Journal of Education, Vol. 90, No. 18 (2254) (November 13, 1919), pp. 488–489.</ref> American investors took over Gisborne's venture and formed a new company called the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company (N.Y.N.L.T.C.) after Field convinced the Cable Cabinet to extend the line from Newfoundland to Ireland .<ref>The Cable Cabinet, The Great Transatlantic Cable, PBS</ref>
The next year the same investors formed the American Telegraph Company and began buying up other companies, rationalizing them into a consolidated system that ran from Maine to the Gulf Coast; the system was second only to Western Union's.<ref name=gotham675 />
In 1857, after securing financing in England and backing from the American and British governments, the Atlantic Telegraph Company began laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable, utilizing a shallow submarine plateau that ran between Ireland and Newfoundland.<ref name=gotham675 /> The cable was officially opened on August 16, 1858, when Queen Victoria sent President James Buchanan a message in Morse code. Although the jubilation at the feat was widespread,<ref name=gotham675 /> the cable itself was short-lived: it broke down three weeks afterward, and was not reconnected until 1866.<ref name=gotham675 /><ref>History of the Atlantic Cable and Submarine Telegraphy. Atlantic-cable.com. Retrieved September 1, 2011.</ref>
During the Panic of 1857, Field's paper business suspended, and Peter Cooper, his neighbor in Gramercy Park, was the only one that kept him from going under.
On August 26, 1858, Field returned to a triumphant homecoming at Great Barrington, Massachusetts, saluting this Massachusetts boy made good. "This has been a great day here," trumpeted The New York Times, "The occasion was the reception of the welcome of Cyrus W. Field, Esq., the world-renowned parent of the Atlantic Telegraph Cable scheme, which has been so successfully completed."<ref>Latest by Telegraph, Ovation to Cyrus W. Field. The New York Times, August 23, 1858. Retrieved September 1, 2011.</ref>
Field's activities brought him into contact with a number of prominent persons on both sides of the Atlantic – including Lord Clarendon and William Ewart Gladstone, the British Finance Minister at the time. Field's communications with Gladstone would become important in the middle of the American Civil War, when three letters he received from Gladstone between November 27, 1862 and December 9, 1862 caused a furor,<ref>Widener Library manuscripts</ref> because Gladstone appeared to express support of the secessionist southern states in forming the Confederate States of America.<ref>Stewart Mitchell. Horatio Seymour of New York. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1938, p. 254.</ref>
In 1866, Field laid a new, more durable trans-Atlantic cable using Brunel's Template:Ship. Great Eastern was, at the time, the largest ocean-going ship in the world. His new cable provided almost instant communication across the Atlantic. On his return to Newfoundland, he grappled the cable he had attempted to lay the previous year and made it into a backup wire to the main cable.
In 1867, Field received a gold medal from the U.S. Congress and the grand prize at the International Exposition in Paris for his work on the transatlantic cable.
Later yearsEdit
In the 1870s–80s, Field entered into transportation business. He served as president of the New York Elevated Railroad Company in 1877–1880 and collaborated with Jay Gould on developing the Wabash Railroad. Field also loaned Henry W. Grady the $20,000 used for Grady to buy a one-quarter interest in the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. He also owned the Mail and Express, a New York newspaper. Bad investments deprived Field of his fortune.<ref>Cyrus W. Field, American financier. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved November 30, 2015.</ref> He lived modestly during the last five years of his life in his native Stockbridge, Massachusetts,<ref>Ingham, J. N. (1983). Biographical dictionary of American business leaders. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, pp. 372–374.</ref> and died in 1892 at the age of 72.
CommemorationEdit
Field and his wife are buried in Stockbridge, Massachusetts in the Stockbridge Cemetery in Berkshire County. His headstone reads: "CYRUS WEST FIELD To whose courage, energy and perseverance the world owes The Atlantic Telegraph."
In December 1884, the Canadian Pacific Railway named the community of Field, British Columbia, Canada in his honor.
Cyrus Field Road, in Irvington, New York, where he died, is named after him.
Fieldia, the burrowing Cambrian worm, is named after Field.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Ardsley, New York was named after Field's ancestor, Zechariah Field, on Cyrus Field's request. Zechariah Field was born in East Ardsley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, and immigrated to America in 1629.
ReferencesEdit
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Carter, Samuel. Cyrus Field: Man of Two Worlds. New York: Putnam, 1968.
- Hearn, Chester G. "Circuits in the Sea: the Men, the Ships, and the Atlantic Cable. Westport: Connecticut, Praeger, 2004"
- Gordon, John Steele. A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable. New York: Harper Perennial, 2003.
- Judson, Isabella F. Cyrus W. Field, His Life and Work, 1819–1892. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1896.
- Klein, Carole. Gramercy Park: An American Bloomsbury. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
- Thompson, Robert L. Wiring a Continent: The History of the Telegraph Industry in the United States, 1832–1866. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1947.
External linksEdit
Template:Sister project Template:Wikisource1911Enc
- Bill Burns. History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications: Cyrus W. Field, Atlantic-Cable.com
- Cyrus Field (1819–1892), The Great Transatlantic Cable, PBS