Marshall Field's
Marshall Field & Company traces its antecedents to a dry goods store opened at 137 Lake Street in Chicago, Illinois in 1852 by Potter Palmer, (1826–1902), eponymously named P. Palmer & Company. In 1856, 21-year-old Marshall Field (1834–1906) moved to the booming midwestern city of Chicago on the southwest shores of Lake Michigan from Pittsfield, Massachusetts and found work at the city's then-largest dry goods firm – Cooley, Wadsworth & Company. Just prior to the American Civil War, in 1860, Field and bookkeeper Levi Z. Leiter, (1834–1904), became junior partners in the firm, then known as Cooley, Farwell & Company. In 1864, the firm, then led by senior partner John V. Farwell, Sr., (1825–1908), was renamed Farwell, Field & Company. only for Field and Leiter to soon withdraw from the partnership with Farwell when presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.
Field Foundation of New York
The Field Foundation was originally established by Marshall Field III, the grandson of a well-known Chicago merchant who founded the famous Marshall Field's department store, in 1940. It was founded in New York to help victims of the Great Depression, and it supported the ideas and methods of the President Roosevelt’s New Deal. Its board was composed of various business leaders, social scientists, judges, and scholars. The Foundation assisted other organizations supporting social change, civil rights, and child welfare, and also offered grants to groups such as the American Council on Race Relations, Provident Medical Associates in Chicago, and the Research Center for Human Relations in New York. By 1949, the Foundation’s assets totaled 11 million dollars and it offered grants of 150,000 dollars per year.