Mary Fields 1832-1914 Female stagecoach Driver

[It's Meeee]

CHARACTER NAME: Mary Fields

BIRTH DATE: 1832

BIRTH PLACE: Tennessee

EDUCATION: No formal education

FAMILY BACKGROUND: Born a slave, grew up an orphan, never married, had no children. 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.

DESCRIPTION OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS: 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.

DATE OF DEATH: 1914

PLACE OF DEATH: Cascade, Montana. Her grave is marked with a simple cross.

PORTRAYED BY Vernice Jackson

WEBSITES:

Brief Lives: Mary Fields
The Ursuline Sisters
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Robert Miller. The Story of Stagecoach Mary Fields (Silver Burdett Press, 1995)
Article in Ebony 32 (October 1977), pp.96-98.

[jimihaze]

This is a wonderful post and very uplifting for our people. This is something that I did not know about. I am going see if I can out more Infro about this . Thanks for the new knowledge.

[saraphen]

Thanks for sharing. We don't often see the stories of black people in the old west, the cowboys and people like Stagecoach Mary.

[It's Meeee]

Hi you two, thanks you're so right we don't hear nearly enough about the role African/Americans played in the old west but they were very prominent. A good book that speaks on this matter is "Profiles in Courage" By Kareeem Abdul Jabaar. He makes mention that one of the Old western characters that Clint Eastwood played was in actuality based on the life of a black Marshall detective. I can't remember all the details offhand but I have the book and the half has never been told with regard to the true valiant roles blacks played in establishing the Old West.