Early Years and the Civil War Field was born in Culpeper County on February 24, 1826. He was the son of Lewis Y. Field and Maria Duncan Field. He attended a classical academy for a time, worked in a local store, and taught school until about 1848, when he went to California as the pay clerk of an army officer. Field worked as an assistant to the secretary of the California constitutional convention in September and October 1849. He had returned to Virginia by the autumn of 1850. After studying law with his uncle, Richard H. Field, then a member of the Virginia Special Court of Appeals, he was admitted to the bar in Culpeper County on April 19, 1852. Field married Frances E. Cowherd on June 20, 1854, in Albemarle County. They lived in Culpeper and had three sons and three daughters, two of whom died in childhood. His wife died in April 1877.