Roswell’s view receives negative corroboration from the testimony of Mrs. Temperance Moon, of Farmington, Utah, who for a time lived in their father’s family.  Under date of February 25th, 1901, Mrs. Moon wrote to me: 

“I can give you very little information in regard to Mr. Field’s place of birth.  It was on Third Street.  I do not remember the names of the cross streets, I think Cherry was one.  Eugene was four months old when I went to live with them.  I stayed until the family went east for the summer.  Mrs. Field’s sister was living with them.  Her name was Miss Arabella Reed.  When they came back Roswell was a few months old.  They went to live on Fifth Street in a three-story house.  Mrs. Field sent word for me to come and take care of Eugene.  I was twelve years old.  She gave me full charge of him.  I was very proud of the charge.  He was a noble child.  I loved him as a dear brother.  He took great delight in hearing me read any kind of children’s stories and fairy tales.  His mother was a lovely woman.  I have a book and a picture Eugene sent to me.  The picture is of him and his mother when he was only six months old.”

Equal and illusive doubt hangs over the date of Eugene Field’s birth.  Was it September 2d or 3d, 1850?  In his “Auto-Analysis,” of which we shall hear more further along, Field himself gives preference to the latter figure.  But as his preference more than half the time went by the rule of contraries, that would be prima-facie evidence that he was born on the earlier date.  There again the testimony of the younger brother is to the effect that in their youth the anniversary of Eugene’s birth was held to be September 2d.  Their father said he could not reconcile his mind to the thought that one of his children was born on so memorable an anniversary as September 3d, the day of Cromwell’s death.  I have little doubt that Field himself fostered the irrepressible conflict of dates, on the theory that two birthdays a year afforded a double opportunity to playfully remind his friends of the pleasing duty of an interchange of tokens on such anniversaries.  If they forgot September 2d, he could jog their memories that Cromwell’s death on September 3d, two centuries before, was no excuse for ignoring his birth on September 3d, 1850.

Whether born on the anniversary of Cromwell’s death or in the boiler-shop, no stories of the youthful precocity of Eugene Field survive to entertain us or to suggest that he gave early indication of the possession either of unusual talent or of that unique personality that were to distinguish him from the thousands born every day.