1. Dr. Elisha Phelps was born on 13 Sep 1762 in Goshen, Litchfield, Connecticut. He died on 4 Apr 1819 in Windsor, Windsor, Vermont, USA.
Elisha married Mary Bartlett "Molly", daughter of Moses Bartlett * and Mary Cooper *, on 8 Mar 1787 in Chatham, , Connecticut, USA. The marriage ended in divorce. Molly was born in 1767 in of Chatham, Middlesex, Connecticut, USA. She died on 25 Jan 1852 in Woodbury, Litchfield, Connecticut, USA. She was buried in South Cemetery, Woodbury, Litchfield, Connecticut, USA.
The weight of the evidence is that Moses Bartlett and Mary Anna Cooper are Molly's parents. In a lawsuit filed by Roswell Martin Field, the court record it states that Molly Bartlett Phelps was the grandaughter of the Rev. Moses Bartlett and great grandaughter of the Rev. Phineas Fiske. In looking at the records Moses was the only one of the sons to stay in Chatham now Portland, Connecticut. In a medical history it says that the two physicians for Chatham were Molly's husband and Moses Bartlett during the period where Molly marries Elisha Phelps. Elisha was likely studying medicine with Molly's father. After Molly Batlett Phelps goes blind and is divorced by her husband in 1798, it is unlikely she would have gone very far from her parents. The 1800 census show individuals that are the right age to be Charles and Molly living with Moses Bartlett.
They had the following children.
+ 2 M i Judge Charles Bartlett Phelps was born on 31 May 1788. He died on 21 Dec 1858. 3 F ii Phelps was born in 1788/1790 in Chatham, Middlesex, Connecticut, USA.
Elisha also married Susanna Eastman "Sukey" on 9 Dec 1798 in , , Vermont, USA. Sukey was born on 10 Oct 1779 in of Hanover, Grafton, New Hampshire, USA. She died on 30 Jul 1850.
They had the following children.
+ 4 M iii Gen. Francis Eastman Phelps was born on 16 Oct 1798. He died on 16 Oct 1874. + 5 F iv Susannah Maria Phelps was born on 27 Feb 1800. She died on 11 Jun 1829. + 6 F v Laura Amelia Phelps was born in 1801. She died on 22 Jun 1852. + 7 M vi Edward Elisha Phelps was born on 24 Apr 1803. He died on 20 Nov 1880. 8 F vii Mary Almira Phelps was born on 12 Aug 1814 in Windsor, Windsor, Vermont, USA. She died on 14 Jun 1864 in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA. She was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, Lot 762, Blk 35.. Mary married Roswell Martin Field, son of Gen. Martin Field and Esther Smith Kellogg, on 15 Oct 1832 in Putney, Windham, Vermont, USA. The marriage ended in divorce. Roswell was born on 22 Feb 1807 in Newfane, , Vermont, USA. He died on 12 Jul 1869 in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis City, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.
Son of Gen. Martin Field, was born in Newfane, February 22, 1807, died at St. Louis, Mo., July 12, 1869, aged 62 years. He fitted for college with Rev. Luke Whitcomb, of Townshend, Vt., and entered Middlebury College in the autumn of 1818, at eleven years of age. Graduating in 1822, he studied law with Hon. Daniel Kellogg, of Rockingham, Vt., and was admitted to practice in September, 1825, at eighteen years of age. He practiced law in Windham County from 1825 to 1839, when he removed to St. Louis, where he remained until his death. He represented the town of Newfane in the General Assembly of this State during the years 1835 and 1836. He was elected State's Attorney for Windham County in 1832, 1833, 1834 and 1835. While a member of the Legislature in 1835, he wrote an able report in favor of abrogating the rule of the common law excluding atheists from giving testimony in courts of justice. The proposition failed of adoption, but in 1851 it was renewed by Hon. Loyal C. Kellogg, of Benson, then a member of the House of Representatives, and passed into a law. Since that period, "no person is deemed incompetent as a witness in any court matter or proceeding on account of his opinions on matters of religious belief." The special pleas which he drew and filed in the libel suit of Torrey vs. Field, reported in the tenth volume of Vermont Reports, were declared by Judge Story to be masterpieces of special pleading. These contributions, with the exception of a multitude of briefs in cases reported in the Vermont and Missouri Reports, are all the memorials of his learning that are left. He was a finished scholar, and read Greek, Latin, French, German and Spanish, besides having an extensive acquaintance with English literature and general science. He could speak with great facility, not only French but German. He was frequently employed in suits by reason of his great familiarity with foreign languages, for the mere purpose of correcting any errors of interpreters in their translations of the testimony of foreigners who could not speak English, and whose evidence was necessarily communicated to a court and jury by an interpreter. It was as a lawyer that he won his greatest distinction. When he went to St. Louis, in 1839, he had to contend with such men as Benton, Gamble and Bates. To none of these was he second in legal attainments, sound judgment and keen foresight. As an advocate he was eloquent, and as a lawyer, learned. His attainments were of that solid character that they served him upon every professional emergency. His first distinction at the bar was obtained in cases involving the intricate old Spanish claims, which he mastered at an early day. His opinions always had great weight in the Superior Courts of the State, and at the time of his decease, he was esteemed as the ablest lawyer at the Missouri bar. By the junior members of the profession he was regarded as an oracle, and freely gave advice to all young lawyers who sought his counsel. He cheerfully and readily aided young men of talent and worth whom he found struggling for success and position against poverty and adversity. He gained a national reputation in the famous Dred Scott case, which he started and carried on until the appeal was entered in the United States Supreme Court, when he turned it over to Montgomery Blair, then residing at Washington. In the dark days of the rebellion, during the years 1861 and 1862, when the friends of the Union in St. Louis and Missouri felt that they were in imminent danger of being driven from their homes and their estates confiscated by rebels and traitors, Gen. Lyon, Gen. Blair, and R. M. Field were among the calm, loyal and patriotic men who influenced public action and saved the city and State. In his social relations he was a genial and entertaining companion, unsurpassed in conversational powers, delighting in witty and sarcastic observations and epigrammatic sentences. He was elegant in his manners, and bland and refined in his deportment. He was a skilful musician, and passionately fond of children, and it was his wont in early life to gather them in groups about him and beguile them by the hour with the music of the flute or violin. He was confiding and generous to a fault, but for a few years before his decease he became reserved and distrustful, had but few intimate associates, and mingled but little in general society, for his confidence had been violated, his generosity abused, and his charities wasted. He was utterly devoid of all ambition for power and place, and he uniformly declined all offers of advancement to the highest judicial honors of the State. Judge Hamilton, of the Circuit Court of St. Louis, in his address to the bar, suggests of him that "he was always under the controlling influence of principle, faithful toward his clients, honorable and upright with his professional brethren, and in all his relations, social, political and professional, frank and sincere to a fault. His heart was warm with the sweetest charities of humanity, and his friendships were as enduring as life itself." His proficiency in other walks of learning than the law would have rendered him remarkable if he had been unacquainted with jurisprudence. It was the accuracy, no less than the extent of his knowledge, which distinguished him above those around him. He seemed to have mastered the principles, the foundation of every subject with which he claimed any familiarity, and it was part of his nature to claim nothing to which his title was not perfect. He never used words without appropriate ideas annexed to them. Nothing of the kind of knowledge which remembers the rule, but leaves forgotten or never knew the reason of the rule. His scholarship was critical and exact. He made the perusal of the Greek and Latin classics his most delightful pastime. In fact, he resorted to this and scientific research, particularly in the department of pure mathematics, for his chief mental recreation. It is greatly to be regretted that he neglected to combine, with his cessations from professional labor, some employment which would have revived and strengthened his physical frame. He was averse to active exercise, and for some years before his death he lived a life of studious seclusion, which would have been philosophical had he not violated, in the little care he took of his health, one of the most important lessons which philosophy teaches. At a comparatively early age he died of physical exhaustion, a deterioration of the bodily organs, and an incapacity, on their part, to discharge the vital functions, a wearing out of the machine before the end of the term for which its duration was designed. The defects of his character were due to a complete absence of the incentive to exertion which rivalry causes. It is obvious to all who read this slight censure, how unassailable is the man of whom it can be said that his principal defects arise from a want of one of the weaknesses of humanity. He was eminently qualified to serve, as well as to adorn society, and in all likelihood he would have found, in a greater variety of occupation, some relief from the monotonous strain under which his energies prematurely gave way. He possessed in full measure the capacity for rendering this service, but unfortunately he shrank from offering himself for its performance. It is not a paradox to say that if he had been more covetous of gain and of fame, more susceptible to the spur of emulation, and less firmly persuaded of the things ordinarily proposed as the reward of ambition, his life would have been happier and more useful to mankind. If he had possessed more ambition, his reputation would have been national, and he would have ranked among the most distinguished lawyers of the country. At a session of the Supreme Court of the State of Missouri, soon after the decease of Mr. Field, Samuel Knox, Esq., a member of the Bar, suggested to the Court that it had lost an able and faithful counselor and its highest ornament in the death of Mr. Field. He was so modest in all his greatness, said Mr. Knox, as never to excite envy, so varied in his gifts, so extended his attainments, so wide his range of thought, that no person in his society could experience anything but pleasure, in his conversation anything but profit and delight. Uniting great industry and acqiurements with the most brilliant wit and genius, well and accurately informed on all subjects, both in science and the arts ; endowed with a memory that retained whatever it received, with quick and clear perceptions, the choicest, most felicitous and forcible language in which to clothe his thoughts, no one could doubt his meaning or withhold the tribute of wonder at his power. His statements Were always terse and clear, his arguments cogent and logical, his conclusions difficult to evade. In a long and eventful professional life, no charge of duplicity or unfairness, no cunning trick, no suspicion of dishonor ever tarnished his fair fame, or raised the slightest doubt of the highest professional honor and personal integrity. One thus distinguished is no ordinary loss — a loss to the Court, to the profession, to the community in which he lived. Mr. Knox then offered the report of a committee, appointed by the St. Louis Bar, at a meeting called to pay a tribute of respect to the memory of Mr. Field, and moved that the report be entered upon the records of the Court, "an enduring memorial of the love and regard of the members of the St. Louis Bar for their departed brother." Judge Wagner, in behalf of the Court, responded as follows: "The members of this Court have heard with the deepest regret of the death of R. M. Field, and the warm and deserved tribute which has just been paid to his memory receives an assenting response from the hearts of all those who knew him. In the decease of our lamented friend and brother, the Bar of Missouri has lost one of its brightest ornaments. To a naturally keen, vigorous and analytical mind, he added a thorough mastery of legal principles combined with high scholarly attainments. Perhaps no man at the Bar of this State ever brought to the consideration of any question a greater amount of exact legal learning or clothed it with a more impressive and attractive logic. When he gave the great energies. and powers of his mind to a cause, he exhausted all the learning to be had on the subject. He studied law as a science and delighted to examine its harmonious structure and explore its philosophic principles. So deeply was he imbued with its true spirit, and so great was his reverence for its excellence, that he maintained them with the most jealous regard and would sooner have failed in success than have won a cause by trenching upon a sound legal rule. He made no parade of learning, and in his social intercourse he had a childlike simplicity. With his professional brethren he was full of courtesy and-kindness and his whole conduct was marked by entire integrity and perfect truth. He adorned every circle in which he moved, and so beautiful was his life in all its relations that he won and enjoyed the esteem and regard of all who knew him. It is fit and proper that the death of such a man should be marked by all the honors which we can pay to his memory. It is just that we should pay this last tribute as an evidence of our appreciation of his great abilities and exalted virtues. It is therfore ordered that the report of the proceedings of the Bar, which have been presented, be entered of record on the minutes of this Court, and out of respect for his memory it will be further ordered that this Court do now adjourn."Mary also married Jerimiah H. Clark on 22 Dec 1832 in Troy, Rensselaer, New York, USA. Jerimiah died in 1839. Mary also married Rollin Richmond on 12 Mar 1844 in Windsor, Windsor, Vermont, USA. Rollin was born on 1 Jul 1806 in Barnard, Windsor, Vermont, USA. He died on 21 May 1895 in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.