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Born a slave in Tennessee in 1832, this tall, powerfully built woman was ambitious, daring and liked a good fight. With no formal education, she forged her way to Ohio and on to the Montana Territory. Declaring herself the protector of the Ursuline nuns at St. Peter's Catholic Mission near Cascade, Montana, Mary defended those she loved from predators on two legs as well as four. She delivered the mail by stagecoach, never missing a day until she was almost 80 years old. She died in Cascade in 1914.
Born a slave, grew up an orphan, never married, had no children, no formal education. The nuns were her family; Mother Amadeus was her mother. She loved the children of Cascade County and supported the local baseball team as their number one fan.
Mary Fields lived by her wits and her strength. She traveled north to Ohio, settled in Toledo and worked for the Catholic convent. She formed a strong bond with Mother Amadeus. When the nuns moved to Montana and Mary learned of Mother Amadeus' failing health, she went west to help out. Having nursed Mother Amadeus back to health, she decided to stay and help build the St. Peter's mission school. She protected the nuns. Mary was a pistol-packing, hard-drinking woman, who needed nobody to fight her battles for her. When turned away from the mission because of her behavior, the nuns financed her in her own business. She opened a cafe. Mary's big heart drove her business into the ground several times because she would feed the hungry. In 1895 she found a job that suited her, as a U.S. mail coach driver for the Cascade County region of central Montana. She and her mule Moses, never missed a day, and it was in this capacity that she earned her nickname of "Stagecoach", for her unfailing reliability.
A Black gun-totin' female in the American wild west. She was six feet tall; heavy; tough; short-tempered; two-fisted; powerful; and packed a pair of six-shooters and an eight or ten-gauge shotgun. A legend in her own time, she was also known as Stagecoach Mary. |
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