Identity area
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Person
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Field, Clarence
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Description area
Dates of existence
[ca. 1880-1931]
History
Clarence Wesley Field was born in the state of Ohio, circa 1880. Orphaned at the age of 8, he was on his own at an early age. He trained in an artist’s studio in New York. During the first decade of the 20th century, he married Edith Wilbur, also from Ohio, who had trained as a nurse. Together, they moved to Alberta in 1910.
By that time, the stresses of life were beginning to take their toll on Clarence, and he spent some time in the Ponoka Hospital. While there, he continued to develop his artistic skills through photography. Later he set up a studio in the town. He was a master in the use of props, as can be seen in some of the portraits taken in his studio in Ponoka.
In 1918, Clarence Field came to the Peace Country and filed on the N.W. 34-72-3, north of Bezanson. By 1920, he and Edith were living on the farm, and in 1922 he opened a photograph studio in Grande Prairie. He had an old model T van in which he traveled back and forth. The couple had no children of their own but adopted a child named Dora Cordray, who later married Leo Nelson.
After the Depression hit in 1929, he closed the studio—no-one could afford expensive portraits—and returned to farming. His debt load from farm and studio were so high, however, that he lost the farm. Clarence Field passed away at his home east of Grande Prairie in 1931, at about 50 years of age; his wife later moved away from the community.
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South Peace Regional Archives