The William Hazard Field family of Mohegan Lake

The following is via the Research and Preservation sub committee of Yorktown Historical Society.

This week we begin a new series exploring the world and properties of the Field family of Mohegan Lake.  You may be more familiar with their relations – the Field family of Hunterbrook’s Fieldhome and Peekskill’s Field Library.  The Fields eventually owned almost all the land between Strawberry Road and Route 6, including Westfield Farm.

The Field family was established in Yorktown by the 1740s in the Hunterbrook area, the main Field family farm is the site of the Fieldhome today.  It was to there that William Hazard Field (1833-1888) was brought at the age of one in from New York City, to live with his Aunt Jerusha after the death of both his parents.  William settled in Mohegan in the 1850s. He married Augusta Currie Bradhurst (1846-1919)  Both are pictured below. He built his home on the corner of Route 6 and Lakeland Street, back in the day when Mohegan Lake was well kown as a summer resort area.

      

(New York Public Library)

There were quite a few illustrious relations that preceeded the generation of our study but perhaps the most famous would be Samuel Osgood.

Samuel Osgood (1748-1789) was a member of the Continental Congress, first Commissioner US Treasury and Postmaster General under George Washington.  He fought in the battles of Lexington and Concord and was a delegate to the Continental Congress. They are also related to Cyrus Field who was responsible for laying the first trans-Atlantic cable.

(Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

The Fields main residence was Manhattan, they treated Mohegan as a summer residence which was becoming more common.  Lake Mohegan in the 1870s was still very much inhabited year round by farmers and dairymen, with the summer boarders only just coming into vogue.  William Hazard Field’s source of income is unclear, however the Field family had a successful pharmacy, commercial drug business and real estate businesses in Manhattan.  A newspaper obituary states that he went to West Point but did not graduate, “[He] lived 4 or 5 years in Europe traveling and collecting books.  He was never actively engaged in business, his life spent in study and travel.

(New York Public Library)

 

To be continued…..