Nathaniel FIELD

                   Copied from Field Genealogy Vol II by Frederick Clifton Pierce,  1901
Dr. Nathaniel Field was born in Jefferson County, Kentucky, in 1805, was educated at the best public schools, and was graduated at Transylvania Medical School, in Lexington, Kentucky.  He first settled in northern Alabama, and practiced there for three years, when he returned to Kentucky.  In the autumn of 1829, he moved to Jeffersonville, Ind., where he afterward resided.  He was a member of the Legislature in 1838 and 1839.  In the spring of the latter year he organized the city government of Jeffersonville, under a charter that he drafted and had passed by the Legislature.  In 1830 he established the first Christian (Campbellite) church in that city, and in 1847 the Second Advent Christian church.  He served as pastor of the former for seventeen years, and of the latter for forty years, without compensation, believing it to be wrong to earn a livelihood by preaching, or to make merchandise of the gospel.  He voted against the entire township in 1834, on the proposition to expel the free Negroes, and was compelled to face a mob in consequence.  He was one of the original abolitionists of the west, and emancipated several valuable slaves that he had inherited.  he held a debate, in 1852, with Elder Thomas P. Connelly, on the State of the Dead, and the arguments were published in book form.  He also published a humorous poem, entitled,  Arts of Imposture and Deception Peculiar to American Society (1858).  Dr. Field was the author of a monograph on Asiatic Cholera, contributed many essays to medical journals and prepared in manuscript letters on Capital Punishment, The Mosaic Record of Creation, The age of the Human Race, and the Chronology of Fossils.  He was president of the Indiana State Medical Society, and served as surgeon in the Civil War.