Mary Fields, Stagecoach Mary, true story, facts, biography, Miantae Metcalf McConnell
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​Top 10 List, February 2018
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1832 Hickman County, Tennessee

A Tennessee native born in 1832, Mary Fields spent the first half of her life, from birth until the emancipation act of 1864, laboring in slavery.

​She had developed a broad spectrum of skills as a slave and no doubt, quickly learned more survival skills while traveling to new destinations where she might exercise her new legal rights as an American citizen.

Sometime during the 1870's Mary Fields obtained employment with the Ursuline Convent in Cleveland, and then, with the new convent in Toledo, Ohio where she worked as a groundskeeper and formed a friendship with Mother Superior Mary Amadeus.

Mary Fields rushes to Montana to save the life of her friend, Mother Mary Amadeus - 1885

​A portion of the hand-hewn cabin seen here was originally built by the Jesuits in 1864 and sold to the Ursulines in 1884.

When the cadre of nuns arrived in the winter of 1884, they watched as blizzard ice blew inside, carving  larger gaps between the logs and changing the dirt floor into a slick icy surface.

Two-hundred acres had been negotiated for purchase, but to the nuns' surprise, additional terms had been added to their acquisition; they  were obligated to provide sewing, baking and other household services to the Jesuits and their male Native American boarding students. Five Ursuline Sisters  persevered to complete those tasks though the living conditions made it nearly impossible.
​
​They nearly froze to death and routinely suffered from frostbit limbs—chronic conditions responsible in part, for Mary Fields's arrival months later.

The above image of Mary Fields and Saint Peter's Mission is a composite. Her portrait was taken in Montana circa 1895; the photo of the mission acreage includes the last structure remaining on the Ursuline property today. Saint Angela's Academy, a large stone three-story building with living quarters and an additional boarding house facility burned to the ground, circa 1911.

The Montana landscape where Native Americans, Ursuline Nuns and
Mary Fields struggled to survive - the Birdtail Sun River Valley shouldered by rugged mountain ranges - A Birdseye View
Picture
​These geological wonders erupt above an otherwise flat prairie that stretches beyond sight, from the Rocky Mountains to the Missouri River. On the left is "Birdtail Rock," one-thousand feet high; in the center is Square Butte and to the right is "Haystack Butte". Birdtail Rock is referenced often in Deliverance Mary Fields. A quote from the book's Prologue describes: "Eastern rocky mountain slopes stretched downward to hills and prairies cut by scant numbers of archetypal anomalies left behind: steep, molar-shaped buttes and elevated arrangements of statuesque stone - pillars that mystified and compassed direction - one in particular that inadvertently inspired a name for itself and the region surrounding its thousand-foot-high summit: Birdtail Rock and The Birdtail, respectively.

Mary Fields works for the Ursulines with the understanding that it would be her home for the rest of her life.


When Mary arrived in 1885, there were less than a dozen persons on the Ursuline property.  Within eight years, a huge school had been constructed that housed over two-hundred boarding students. It is likely that this achievement would not have transpired without the labor contributed by Mary Fields.

An accomplished horsewoman, she cared for the stock andthe related transportion equipment. She became the mission freighter, supplying staples and construction tools and whatever was needed from the nearest settlement, seventeen miles each way, through perilous weather and formidable wilderness dangers. 
"She did whatever we couldn't," recounted a nun from the Ursuline mission
The most essential requirement, food, was also in large part provided by Mary. With excellent rifle skills she was able to hunt and deliver wild game to the Nuns and students. 

It is documented that Mary was responsible for the construction and operation of a hennery which contained over four-hundred hens and ducks. Not only did this supply meat, it provided eggs that were necessary to bake bread, a mission staple. Mary also planted acres of vegetables each spring and an herb garden for spices and medicinal purposes.  

After Mary had been an incisive champion to the Ursulines and to the large population of native American and white girls for nine years, she was unjustly fired by Montana's First Catholic Bishop who had usurpted authority from Mother Mary Amadeus and mandated that they, the nuns and children, were thereafter forbidden any contact with their friend and supporter from that day onward.
​
He underestimated the women and the power of their friendship.​

Mary Fields becomes a
  resident of Cascade, Montana

The Montana Territory joined the Union, thus becoming a state, in 1889. A pioneer on the Montana frontier since 1885, Mary Fields moved from the remote region of The Birdtail to the small town of Cascade in 1894. The photo on the left shows Mary in Cascade.

Deliverance Mary Fields readers will recognize the image on bottom right: Whizzer the Homing Pigeon, an illustration on a cigar box that served as Mary's cash box from 1894 to 1895 when she owned and operated "Mary's Cafe", a going Cascade concern.

​Mary enjoyed smoking cigars.
​"Mary Fields was 6 feet tall and weighed over 200 pounds!" 
​-take a look and decide for yourself-
This preamble voiced by generations of regional Birdtail residents still resonates today. Historically, these words were the ones most often used to describe the source of the region's legend—Mary Fields, also known as Stagecoach Mary, N-----  Mary, White Crow, or Black Mary.
 
Judging by the heights of members of the Cascade Cubs Baseball Team pictured here, would you wager that Mary Fields is six feet tall? ...I doubt that she weighed two-hundred pounds either.
 
It was precisely this kind of rhetoric that prompted me to spend years of research in search of the true-life story of this remarkable pioneer.  As I suspected, Mary Fields' true story was far more extraordinary than the fictional exaggerations—a meager attempt to homogenize this courageous entrepreneur's innate intelligence, skill and compassion. 

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