Fields, Mary (c. 1832–1914)

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Fields, Mary (c. 1832–1914)

African-American former slave, associated with the Ursuline nuns, who was one of the first women to drive a U.S. mail coach on a regular route and became a folk hero of the American West. Name variations: Black Mary; Stagecoach Mary. Born around 1832 in Hickman County, Tennessee, and celebrated her birthday on both March 15 and May 15; died in Cascade, Montana, on December 5, 1914; parents un-known; never married; no children.

Following the Civil War, worked at various jobs along the Mississippi River before finding work at the Ursuline convent in Toledo, Ohio; moved to St. Peter's mission, near Cascade, Montana (1885); forced by the area bishop to leave the mission because of her unruly temper, opened a restaurant in Cascade; became the second woman to drive a U.S. mail coach route (1895–1903); ran a laundry, became mascot and supporter of the Cascade baseball team, and a much-loved citizen.

When Mary Fields was born in Hickman County, Tennessee, slavery was still legal and birth records, especially of slaves, were poorly kept. In later years, the powerful six-foot woman, who became legendary as "Black Mary" and "Stagecoach Mary," claimed that the year of her birth was 1832, and she celebrated both March 15 and May 15 as her birth dates. These celebrations in her adopted hometown of Cascade, Montana, shut down the town's schools so that all the children could share in the party. Movie actor Gary Cooper recorded his vivid childhood recollections of Cascade's most famous black citizen in an account he gave Ebony magazine in 1959.

At the close of the Civil War, Fields was in her mid-30s when she apparently took a number of various jobs along the Mississippi River. One was as a chambermaid on the riverboat Robert E. Lee, and she loved to tell about the famous riverboat race held on June 30, 1870, between the Robert E. Lee and its rival, the Natchez. To build up extremely high levels of steam, the boat furnaces were stoked to their limits, and according to Fields, "They throw'd everything but the kitchen sink in that fire and it was so hot, we figured it was about to bust!" With the hearts of its passengers racing too, the Robert E. Lee was victorious.

By 1884, Fields was working at the Ursuline convent in Toledo, Ohio. Precisely how and when she arrived there is not clear. According to some reports, she met the convent's Mother Amadeus when she accompanied the children of the nun's brother to Toledo after the death of their mother. Other accounts say that Fields had been a slave and confidential servant in the house of the nun's oldest brother (her father, in some sources), Judge Edmund Dunne; still others say she had been a personal maid to the nun prior to her taking vows. At any rate, Mary found comfort and good work among the Ursulines, which she returned in good measure in her role as caretaker and handywoman.

She was a tart-tongued, gun-toting, hard-drinking, cigar-and-pipe-smoking, 6-foot 200-pound black woman who was tough enough to take on any two men. She was also a gentle, considerate person who won the hearts of many people in and near Cascade, Montana.
—Don Miller

In 1884, Mother Amadeus was sent to St. Peter's mission, near the small town of Cascade, Montana, where Jesuit priests had been working among the Blackfeet Indians for two decades. Her task was to open a school for Native American girls. When word reached the Ohio convent in 1885 that Mother Amadeus was extremely ill with pneumonia, Fields left for Montana to nurse her beloved benefactor. Mother Amadeus recovered, and Fields stayed on at the mission, handling deliveries, gardening, doing light construction work on the new convent, and other odd jobs. Put in charge of overseeing the washing, she preferred to do the church and sacristy linens herself.

Fields also raised chickens, doing a thriving business that amounted at one point to 400 birds. After a skunk got into the mission's coop one night and ate a number of chicks, Fields managed to kill it with a hoe. She then dragged the carcass a mile to the convent to show the nuns. A visiting army chaplain wrote her, asking about the odor of the skunk's "wrath." The practical Fields replied, "I killed him from the front not from the rear."

Fields carted goods for the mission, even in the harsh Montana winters when the roads were considered impassable. Mission annals of November 27, 1893, show: "Mary Fields returned today. She spent last night in a snowdrift about ½ way between here and Cascade and walked all night to keep from freezing." In one instance, when wolves frightened Mary's horses, causing her cart to be turned over, she stood guard over the supplies through the night, keeping the wolves at bay with her rifle and revolver.

Hardened to such conditions, and weighing well over 200 pounds, Fields could be fearless. She smoked a large cigar or pipe, and she always wore a man's cap, shoes and overcoat, as well as an apron and long dress. Contemporary accounts of her temper include an altercation with a ranch foreman over a broken harness for one of her draft horses, and the mission annals refer to a shootout between Fields and a hired hand, as well as a rifle standoff with another man. Eventually these displays of high temper brought so many complaints to the attention of Bishop John B. Brondel that he felt forced to direct that she be sent away. The order was received as a blow at the mission, where a great loyalty had developed between Mary and the nuns and children.

Moving into Cascade, 15 miles from the mission, Mary had the help of the townspeople and the mission in establishing a restaurant. Unfortunately, her kindness in extending credit to her customers caused the enterprise to fail. Help was provided to reopen the eatery, but Fields could not be hardnosed, and it failed again.

Then, in 1895, Mother Amadeus stepped in and donated a spring wagon and team of horses to help the 63-year-old Fields obtain a mail route. Fields is the second woman in the United States known to have held a regular mail stage route. After a bad accident with the larger wagon, Mother Amadeus gave Fields a one-horse buggy; later, when Fields drove a stagecoach, she earned the title by which she is best known, Stagecoach Mary.

For eight years, Fields covered the route from the town to the mission, until age finally forced her to give it up, in 1903. In that time, she met every train, and when snow made the route impassable, she would walk to the mission, carrying the mail bags herself. Contemporary reports indicate that she never missed a trip to St. Peter's.

After her official retirement, Fields took in laundry at her small house in Cascade. Though she had mellowed over the years, her rough temper never entirely evened out. She once grabbed a non-paying customer by the collar, then twirled him around and hit him in the jaw with her fist. "His laundry bill is paid!" she declared. Nevertheless, Fields was widely loved. She babysat many of the town children who shared in the celebration of her birthdays. As mascot of the baseball team, she provided boutonnieres for each member of competing teams from her well-known garden and presented large bouquets to hitters of home runs.

In 1910, R.B. Glover leased the New Cascade Hotel with the understanding that Fields would receive free meals there. She had long enjoyed a nip at the local saloons and earned a reputation in some circles as a hard drinker. When a town ruling was passed forbidding women in the saloon, according to one recollection, it "almost broke her heart." Then D.W. Munroe was elected mayor and won Fields as a friend for life by rescinding the ruling. According to Cooper, this privilege, "if you want to call it one, [was] given to no other woman."

In 1912, when Fields was about 80 years old and her house and laundry burned, the peo-memorated by the renowned western artist Charles M. Russell, a resident of nearby Great Falls, in a pen-and-ink sketch entitled A Quiet Day in Cascade. The drawing shows Fields indignant at a kicking mule whose antics have caused a basket of eggs to be broken.

In early December 1914, a report appeared in the Great Falls Tribune that Mary Fields, "for more than a third of a century a resident of [Cascade] and believed to be the pioneer colored woman of the Chestnut Valley" had been brought to Great Falls' Columbus hospital, very ill, with "infirmities of old age … and … dropsy." On December 5, Fields died there, and, because there was as yet no Catholic Church in the town of Cascade, her funeral was held in the Pastime Theater. The Tribune reported "a large number of friends and acquaintances paid their last tributes of respect.… The casket was hidden from view by floral tributes," and the funeral was "one of the largest ever held in Cascade."

In the 1970s, as part of Cascade's bicentennial project, the wooden cross that had long marked Mary Fields' grave in Hillside Cemetery was replaced by a headstone, along the road to her beloved mission.

sources:

"Great Crowd at Fields Funeral," in Great Falls [Montana] Tribune. December 6, 1914.

"Mary Fields Near Death," in Great Falls [Montana] Tribune. December 1, 1914.

McBride, Sr. Genevieve. The Bird Tail. NY: Vantage Press, 1974.

Miller, Don. "Mary Fields: Freight Hauler and Stage Driver," in True West. August 1982, pp. 52–55.

Rowe, Mrs. Clarence J., comp. Mountain and Meadows: A Pioneer History of Montana, 1805 to 1925. Great Falls, MT: Cascade County Historical Committee, n.d.

collections:

Contemporary papers and histories are held in the Cascade County (Montana) Historical Society Archives and in the archives of the Ursuline Center, both in Great Falls, Montana.

Margaret L. Meggs , independent scholar on women's and disability issues and on feminism and religion, Havre, Montana

Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia