April 2023 • Nebraskaland 37
The Monument to the Deceased at Fort Atkinson State Historical Park was dedicated in 2013. Funded by the Fort Atkinson
Foundation, it includes a boulder with a plaque recognizing the 313 soldiers and civilians who died while serving at Fort Atkinson
between 1819 and 1827, a plaque listing their names, and a headstone for Gabriel Field.
ERIC FOWLER, NEBRASKALAND
Fort Atkinson
with History Nebraska, formerly the Nebraska State
Historical Society, who spent years researching the soldier.
His parents, Abner Field and Jane Pope, had moved there from
Virginia, where they were well-known and infl uential. Maj.
Abner Field was a commander in the Revolutionary War and
senator in Virginia. Pope came from an aristocratic family.
Among Field's distant relatives were two presidents, George
Washington and, through marriage, John Quincy Adams, as
well as one of the country's most famous explorers, William
Clark.
Field gained military experience in the War of 1812, serving
in the Kentucky Volunteers and Kentucky Militia. After the
war, he worked as a fi eld surveyor in northwestern Missouri
in 1815 and 1816.
