Mary Fields aka Stagecoach Mary

This is the story of Mary Fields, 'Stagecoach Mary', who got her nickname at the turn of the 20th Century. She earned this nickname by working for the United States Postal System delivering the United States Mail through adverse conditions that would have discouraged the most hardened frontiersmen of that period. All by herself, she never missed a day for 8 years, carrying the U. S. Mail and other important documents that helped settle the wild open territory of central west Montana. Mary had no fear of man, nor beast, and this sometimes got her into trouble. She delivered the mail regardless of the heat of the day, cold of night, wind, rain, sleet, snow, blizzards, Indians and Outlaws. Mary was 6 feet tall, and weighed over 200 pounds, and even with 'those' extraordinary extremes, there were two more facts that made 'her' history. Mary was the second woman in 'history' to carry the U. S. Mail, however, even that was a matter of simplicity, for a fact, she was a Negro Woman, and the only 'Negro', for hundreds and hundreds of miles when she first arrived in Montana. This feature story covers Mary's colorful life, from the plantation where she was born a slave in 1832, to the famous Steamboat race between the "Robert E. Lee" and the "Natchez" on the Mississippi River, to her death in Cascade, Montana, 1914. Stagecoach Mary was a cigar smoking, shotgun and pistol toting Negro Woman, who even frequented saloons drinking whiskey with the men, a privilege only given to 'her', as a woman. However, not even this fact, sealed the credentials given to her, her credentials boasted that, 'she could knock out any man with one punch', who stepped upon her womanhood, a claim she proved true.