A Pistol-Packing Powerhouse!

In my previous post of Pioneering Women of Civil War America (Nineteenth Installment) about Victoria Claflin Woodhull, I promised my next feature would be of “A Pistol-Packing Powerhouse!”

Allow me to introduce our next Pioneering Woman of Civil War America through famous Hollywood actor and Montana native Gary Cooper who met this Pistol-Packing Powerhouse as a boy and, in 1959, had this to say about her:

“Born a slave somewhere in Tennessee, Mary lived to be one of the freest souls ever to draw a breath or .38.”

Gary Cooper was referring to:

Mary Fields (circa 1832 – 1914)

Most sources concur that Mary Fields was born into slavery around 1832 in Hickman County, Tennessee. As I’m sure you know, slaves were treated as chattel, with their birth and death dates (if known) recorded next to a number assigned to them upon birth versus their birth name. This posed problems later in matching numbers versus names to birth and death dates, especially if a slave was sold one or more times and their personal data not transferred with them.

So, What Made Mary A Pistol-Packing Powerhouse?

Complementary of Gary Cooper’s quote, Mary kept that Smith and Wesson under her apron and a rifle and jug of whiskey by her side. Not to mention, she could curse up a storm, loved to smoke cigars, and didn’t shy away from a good fistfight!

Mary’s mighty size of 6 feet, 200 lbs. also made her a formidable figure, and her former life as a slave toiling in the cotton fields gave her the strength and stamina that in 1895, at the age of 63, would make her:

The First African-American Woman (Second Woman Overall) to Serve as a Star-Route Mail Carrier of the United States Postal Service!

As a Star-Route Mail Carrier, Mary was not a direct employee, but an independent contractor who delivered the mail for the United States Postal Service along an approved route to a person or household. Unlike Mary, who secured one route and drove her own stagecoach, some contractors built a “chain-like” business out of several routes, while others sublet their routes or hired a driver to fulfill their deliveries.

Most interestingly, Mary was granted her route after she proved herself to be the fastest applicant to hitch a team of six horses.

Mary never missed a day on the job throughout her eight years of service (awarded in two contracts for the years 1895-1899 and 1899-1903). If the snow encumbered her stagecoach and horses, she’d strap on snowshoes and shoulder the mail sacks along her 10.5-mile route, west-northwest through the wild frontier of Montana, between Cascade and St. Peter’s Mission (pictured below). And neither bears, bandits, wolves, nor inclement weather could keep Mary from protecting and delivering her mail.

St. Peters Mission near Cascade Montana 1884

Okay. . .so nothing like “putting the cart before the horse” in terms of the sequence of information within my typical blogs and, at this point, you must be wondering:

How on earth did Mary go from enslavement in Tennessee to being her own businesswoman in Montana?

There are a couple of versions out there, but the common denominator as to how Mary found her way is linked to the Dunne family. Either Josephine Cecelia Warner Dunne of Mississippi knew Mary’s master and mistress or she and her husband, Judge Edmund Francis Dunne, met Mary while Mary was working on a Mississippi steamboat. Whichever the case, after the Civil War ended and Mary was free, she appears to have been working for the Dunnes. Around 1870, Josephine died, and Judge Dunne entrusted Mary to escort his five children to his sister, Mother Mary Amadeus Dunne (pictured below) of an *Ursuline convent in Toledo, Ohio.

Mother Amadeus Dunne 1884

The Mother Superior befriended Mary, overseeing work she assigned to her until, in 1881, Mother Amadeus was sent to Montana Territory (which achieved statehood in 1889) to open parochial schools for Native American girls of the Blackfeet tribe. Around 1884, when the Mother Superior fell ill with pneumonia, Mary rushed to her bedside and helped nurse her back to health. Mother Amadeus appreciated Mary’s loyalty and gave her room and board at the convent in St. Peter’s Mission in exchange for her cooking, gardening, maintaining the grounds, constructing and repairing buildings, raising chickens, doing carpentry, and hauling freight. Mary found paid work from the town, operating a stagecoach in the transfer of passengers to and from the train station.

In 1894, after ten years at the mission, Mary was dismissed from her job around the convent by Bishop John Baptist Brondel for drawing her gun back at a co-worker, who complained about her—a black woman—making more money than him. Who could blame the bishop, who was well aware of Mary’s habits, including her carousing in the saloons? He could no longer turn a blind eye to her as a bad influence to the mission’s children. Although Mother Amadeus and the other nuns, who adored Mary and had come to rely heavily upon her labor, failed in their arguments to spare Mary’s job, they would later give Mary a stagecoach for her mail route.

Until Mary obtained her contract as a Star-Route Mail Carrier, she moved to Cascade, where she ran a laundry service and opened a couple of diners, which failed owing to Mary’s big heart in feeding most of her customers, especially the children, free of charge. Where Mary failed in the restaurant business, she succeeded in endearing herself to the locals and in managing her mail route, the latter from which her reliability earned her the nickname:

“Stagecoach Mary!”

The children of the Blackfeet Nation, with whom Mary would come in contact after she arrived in the rugged country around St. Peter’s Mission, called Mary “White Crow” because as one wrote: She acted like a white woman but had black skin. Most, if not all, of these children had never seen a black-skinned person before, and Mary was the only one around for miles. How could she not pose an enigma?

Stagecoach Mary (aka Black Mary) would come to be so respected by the folk in and around Cascade, Montana, that:

When her birthday rolled around each year, the town closed its schools to celebrate.

When Montana passed a law forbidding women to enter saloons, the mayor of Cascade granted her an exemption.

When, in her retirement as a Star-Route Mail Carrier her house (also a laundry) burned, the townsfolk re-built it.

When she died (1914), her funeral was funded by the locals of this wild-west frontier, and it was the largest ever attended. Many pallbearers carried Mary to her final resting place beneath a simple stone marker (pictured below) in a small cemetery along her mail route.

Head Stone for Mary Fields

What Was the Motivation behind Stagecoach Mary’s Work?

I would venture to guess it was the same as for most former slaves who welcomed their freedom and desired to do something with it, including supporting themselves—and in “Stagecoach Mary’s” case, her habits.

I’ll end here with the hopes that you’ve enjoyed this post and that I’ve whet your appetite to learn more about Stagecoach Mary Fields at the following places:

Video on My Complimentary Civil War Women Website

Article Online at History.com: “Stagecoach” Mary Fields

Book on Amazon: Mary Fields AKA ‘Stagecoach Mary’ by Erich Martin Hicks

Stay Tuned for the Next Installment of Pioneering Women of Civil War America, Which Promises to Feature a Woman. . .

“Of the People and For the People!”