Helen Maria Field was born September 3, 1840, in Chesterfield, New Hampshire.

The genealogy of the Field family went back to the early colonial times, when three brothers came from England to what became the United States, and settled in Taunton, Massachusetts, where many of their descendants stayed.

The father's health was poor due to an unfortunate fall early in life, which ultimately caused his death in 1850, at the age of 39, when Helen was nine years old.

[1] On 2 Jan 1862, in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts,[3] she married Ransford A. Comstock (d. 1891), a native of that town.

She was a writer for the Chicago Tribune and other leading publications of the east and west.