Basically, Stagecoach Mary ruled! Six-foot-tall, 200-pound Mary Fields smoked cigars, packed a pistol, kept a jug of whiskey at her side, and made certain the mail got delivered. She was the first African American woman to be employed as a mail carrier in the United States, and only the second woman to work for the United States Postal Service–a job she took on at the age of sixty.
Fields was born a slave and grew up as an orphan. After emancipation, she was taken under the wing of an Ohio nun named Mother Amadeus. When Mother Amadeus suddenly got sick, Fields nursed her back to health. She also took it upon herself to protect all the nuns in the convent–with a gun strapped under her apron.
Of course, this sort of toughness, while it may have been appreciated, doesn’t necessarily fit in a nunnery. Fields was ultimately dismissed from her duties. The nuns felt bad, so they provided her with enough money to start her own business. Mary opened a café, but because she was so kind and generous, she gave food to everyone who stepped in the door (whether or not they had money) and her business was run into the ground several times. Eventually, she closed down the café and began working a mail delivery job. She and her mule, Moses, never missed a day of work. Even if it was snowing and the wagon was frozen in its tracks, Mary would make the deliveries on foot, carrying the sacks of mail on her shoulders.
In 1895 she applied for a job with the United States Postal Service delivering mail throughout the Montana Territory. For her job interview, she and a dozen hardened Old West cowboys half her age were asked to hitch a team of six horses to a stagecoach as quickly as possible. The 60-year old Mary Fields blew them all away, hitching the horses and then having time left over to run to the saloon, grab a shot, come back, and smoke a cigar while laughing at the other cowpokes. She became the second woman – and the first black person of any gender – to work for the U.S. Post Office.
For the next six years, 60+ year old Mary Fields rode a stagecoach packed with money and expensive parcels through the Montana territories delivering mail anywhere, any time, through any terrain and weather and all manner of danger. Braving blizzards, heat waves, driving rain and screaming winds, Mary never missed a day of work, never failed to deliver a single letter, and was never late once. If the snow got so high that the horses couldn’t keep going, Mary would tie them to a tree, throw her mail bag over her shoulder, and walk ten miles through waist deep snow and twenty mph headwinds to deliver a letter to some random person on a farm in the middle of nowhere Montana. When the weather wasn’t completely soul-suckingly frigid she had to worry about outlaws and Indian attacks, although she does mention that the latter wasn’t very common – for most Sioux, she was the first black person they’d ever seen, and since they didn’t know what the deal was they usually just left her alone. If anyone got a little too close for comfort she of course also carried that trusty ten-gauge shotgun that, according to her personal experience, was capable of “cutting a man in half at closer range.” It was doing this job where Stagecoach Mary earned her nickname. Any time someone needed something delivered on time Mary would roll up with a boomstick, a pet eagle (!) and a mule named Moses and, I must say, that was a hell of a lot more reliable than any overnight delivery service you could ever ask for.
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One of the more famous tales of Stagecoach Mary’s came one evening when was charging through the countryside on one of her runs to deliver food and medicine to underprivileged nuns when suddenly out of nowhere a pack of psychotic wolves charged in and attacked her horses, freaking them out, ripping them up, and flipping the entire cart on its side. Mary jumped out, used the overturned cart as cover to keep her from being mauled from the back when she wasn’t looking, and then, with only a small lamp as her light source, she fought off several attacks from this pack of ferocious beasts throughout the night, first by blasting them with a shotgun at close range, and then switching to her revolver when she ran out of buckshot. The next morning she muscled the cart back upright, got everything back in place, tracked down some of the horses, made the rest of the trip back, and brought everything to the convent intact – except for a keg of molasses that had cracked during the battle, which the ungrateful Bishop made her pay for out of pocket.
After ten years of delivering the mail, Mary decided it was time to retire, and she settled down in Cascade and opened a laundry. She often ended her day with a drink and a cigar at the local saloon with the men of the community. There, she earned respect for her business savvy. One day a fellow who had not paid is laundry bill came into the saloon; Mary saw him, stepped up behind him and knocked the man down with one blow. She then put her foot on his chest and wouldn’t let him up until his bill was paid. After that, customers made sure their laundry bill was paid up!
She loved baseball and before each town game, she presented the players with buttonhole bouquets from her garden; she also would help out the local mothers if they needed someone to watch their children.
She was known and loved in town, so when cowboy artist Charles Russell lived in Cascade for a time, he couldn’t resist sketching a pen-and-ink drawing called A Quiet Day in Cascade, which depicts Mary being upended by a hog and spilling a basket of eggs.
The town adored her. They declared her birthday a holiday and closed the school on that day.
In 1914 Stagecoach Mary died of liver failure. The whole town participated in her funeral.
