Rachel Field, a descendent of Cyrus West Field, who laid the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic; of Stephen Johnson Field, an associate justice of the Supreme Court from 1863 to 1897; and of David Dudley Field, Jr., a brilliant lawyer who wrote the code of civil procedures (1848-1850) that became the basis for legal reforms in most of the United States and in England, was from a family of achievers. She was born 19 September 1894, to Dr. Matthew D. Field, a physician, and Lucy Atwater Field. Although she was born in New York City, she lived in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, until she was ten and attended, with a dozen other pupils, a school kept by "two dear old ladies" where, as she recalls, she "was a trial to the one who taught arithmetic, reading, spelling, and geography, but a favorite of the one who taught ... poetry and planned plays. ..."
Field not only liked acting in the school plays presented in Miss Brewer's parlor; she also learned her part and the parts of every other child, long before the dress rehearsal. She learned these by having the lines read aloud to her and thus developed a facility for memorizing.
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