Marshall Field

Encyclopedia : M : MA : MAR : Marshall Field

Marshall Field (1834–1906) was founder of Marshall Field and Company, the Chicago-based chain of department stores.

Field was born on a farm in Conway, Massachusetts. At the age of 19, he moved to Chicago and obtained employment at a dry goods store. Field rose to become a partner in the company.

Field and a partner, Levi Leiter, joined another dry goods store owned by Potter Palmer. The store then became known as Field, Palmer, and Leiter. Shortly thereafter, Palmer retired from retailing. In 1881 Field bought out his remaining business partner and changed the store's name to Marshall Field and Company. The quote "Give the lady what she wants" is attributed to Field.

Marshall Field's department store chain has since been acquired by Target in 1990, which sold it to May Department Stores in 2004 and was acquired by Federated Department Stores in 2005. On September 20, 2005, Federated Department Stores announced it would retire the name Marshall Field by the fall of 2006 and rebrand all Marshall Field stores as Macy's.

The Field Museum of Natural History is named after him.

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.