Cyrus W. Field was a business man until about 1854–56, when with Peter Cooper, Moses Taylor, and others he organized the Atlantic Telegraph Company. Although the first cable was laid in 1858, it was not until 1866 that the enterprise was entirely successful, after Mr. Field had crossed the ocean thirty times in the prosecution of the work. He received the thanks of Congress and many other honors.
His brother, David Dudley Field, was conspicuous at the New York bar for over fifty years. For forty years of this time he devoted all his spare moments to the subject of the reform of the law and obtained a marked success. The new system of civil procedure has been adopted in many States and substantially followed in Great Britain. In 1873 he was elected the first president of an association for the reform and codification of the law of nations formed at Brussels in that year.[27]
The two houses owned by the brothers Field have been united by the present owner, Henry W. Poor, banker and author of the statistical work on American railways universally consulted by bankers and investors throughout the country. The interior has been beautifully reconstructed.
Former Residence of the Late Peter Cooper and the Late Abram S. Hewitt
Peter Cooper was born in New York in 1791. His father being a man of small means, he was at an early age put into business and contributed to the support of his family.
He entered into the manufacture of glue and soon became the best-known maker of that commodity. In 1828, when thirty-seven years of age, he had acquired considerable wealth and was enabled to buy three thousand acres of land within the limits of the city of Baltimore. Here he built the great Canton Iron Works, and the entire investment soon proved extremely successful. About the year 1830 he built, at the West Point Foundry, N. Y., the first locomotive constructed in the United States for actual service. Not long after he disposed of the Canton Iron Works and erected enormous iron works at the city of Trenton, N. J. The firm was a pioneer in the successful manufacture of iron and became one of the largest of the kind in the country.