Reverend David Dudley Field was born May 20, 1781 in East Guilford, now Madison, Connecticut. His father was Captain Timothy Field, a former officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Field graduated from Yale in 1802 where he received theological training under Yale President Timothy Dwight, a political conservative and scholar. After college he continued his theological studies in Somers, Connecticut under the supervision of Reverend Dr. Charles Backus. Throughout his academic and professional career he exhibited a natural fondness for historical and geological research. In September 1803 he became licensed to preach. The following month he married Submit Dickinson on October 31. Together they had nine children: David Dudley Jr., Emelia, Timothy, Matthew, Jonathan, Stephen Johnson, Cyrus West, Henry Martyn and Mary. On April 4, 1804 Field became pastor in Haddam, Connecticut. In 1818 he resigned from this position and over the next five months undertook a missionary tour in Western New York under the direction of the Old Connecticut Missionary Society. Field next became the pastor of the Congregational Church in Stockbridge Massachusetts from 1819 to 1837. He resigned and retook his old position in Haddam on April 11, 1837, and in the same year he received a Doctorate of Divinity from Williams College. Field retired in 1851 and returned to Stockbridge, where he died on April 15, 1867.