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Knowledge Box Archive | home
Black Mary
BLACK MARY
She was the only woman ever allowed, by order of the Mayor, to drink at the local bar in Cascade, Montana. She was often seen smoking cigars in public. And there was never anyone foolish enough to take up her standing bet that she could knock out any man in Montana with one punch. She weighed 200 pounds, wore cowboy boots and kept a Colt revolver under her apron. She was Mary Fields, born a Tennessee slave in 1832 who worked the cotton fields of Mississippi and served as a chambermaid on the steam boat Robert E. Lee. She befriended in 1870 and nursed to health the Mother Superior of Saint Peters Womens Convent near Great Falls, and undertook the dangerous job of hauling supplies by wagon for the nuns from the distant Cascade railroad depot. Black Mary roomed at the convent, fed 400 chickens daily and kept the garden, washed the nuns clothes... but preferred the company of men and drank and swore with the best of them. Montanas first Catholic Bishop in 1888 forced her to leave. She moved to nearby Cascade and became only the second woman in America to operate a mail route. For generations she babysat, taught and treated and clothed children, took in laundry, fed the hungry, and used her money to help young Basque sheepherders. Townspeople closed the local school each year on Black Marys birthday. Cowboy artist Charlie Russell did a pen and ink drawing of her being knocked down by a horse and spilling her basket of eggs. She lived an 82 year legend of toughness and kindness.
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