When President Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, Mary Fields was a free woman. Much later, Fields told her friends that her father worked in their master’s fields while her mother was a slave in the master’s house. She was most likely born in 1832, or perhaps the year before or the year after. Records of slave births were rarely kept, but Fields claimed that her birthday was on March 15. When Mary Fields was born, slavery was still an integral part of Southern culture. Let’s take a look at some of the fascinating facts about Stagecoach Mary, the colorful character of Cascade. She lived in a convent but was the only woman in town who was allowed to frequent the saloons. She could drink and fight like any man, yet she was kind, nurturing, and motherly like a woman. Much of her appeal lay in the fact that her reputation and history were both novelty and a paradox.Īt the time, as the only African-American in that part of Montana, one couldn’t help but notice her. Mary Fields was a beloved woman from the town of Cascade, Montana. Few women and even fewer former slaves lived as authentic a life in the Old West as Mary Fields, better known as Stagecoach Mary.
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