John Field was a pioneer of Adair County, coming here as a teenager with his step-father, William Hurt, Sr. in 1793. He grew to manhood and was a businessman and civil servant for many years.

Field served as the first Adair County jailer, the first Columbia post master, operated various businesses and farms, invested widely, and was on the early 1800s town council.

This house was constructed for his wife, Martisha Stapp Field, just before the outbreak of the War of 1812, but not much before, likely completed in inhabited by mid-1813. John Marshall Clemens, local attorney, took a room here after Field fell upon financial distress, after the financial panic of 1819. Clemens lived in one room and sometimes saw clients in an adjoining room. Clemens went on to marry Jane Lampton, of Columbia, and they lived in the rented rooms for some time, perhaps as much as a year.

Later, of course, the Clemenses moved from Kentucky and were the parents of a family of children that included Samuel Langhorne, best known to many as 'Mark Twain.'

John Field lost this town property and most of his holdings in the early 1820s, retiring to a small farm at Glensfork where he died in the 1850s.

Good luck to the new owners who obviously intend this house to reclaim it's grandeur.