Living in Montana in 1895, Mary Fields saw an opportunity for work that seemed both important and satisfying: making deliveries by stagecoach to a mission school in the hills beyond Cascade, a mountain town. Back then many packages and letters in the West were delivered by stagecoach.
Stagecoach drivers needed to be strong and brave because outlaws sometimes robbed stagecoaches, which transported valuable items. There were wild animals, too, that the drivers had to keep away from their horses. Mary knew she was strong and brave—and experienced traveling in terrain with which she was familiar because she had already worked at St. Peter’s mission, the destination for deliveries.
Mary was up against competition for the job. Dozens of cowboys were applying, and Mary was considered not to be as capable for this work as a man. Plus, she was Black, which in that largely segregated society was a strike against her. The stagecoach manager dismissed her, but Mary was a woman to be reckoned with. Undaunted, she demonstrated her topnotch skills in roping, hitching six horses to the stagecoach, and driving the team.
Mary got the job! She trained a pet eagle as her partner on the trails, which could fend off thieves should she be attacked. One night her stagecoach went topsy-turvy into a gully, and fierce wolves emerged from the shadows. Knowing how important her delivery was (food and letters for the children at St. Peter’s School), Mary stayed awake all night protecting her goods and horses. Word of Mary’s endurance and savvy spread; she became a hero to the community of Cascade. She rode the route between Cascade and St. Peter’s for eight years, retiring in her seventies.
Mary Fields was a trailblazer. Author Tami Charles found documentation of the history of women in the postal service in the Smithsonian Institution’s resources, enabling her to write the picture book biography Fearless Mary: Mary Fields, American Stagecoach Driver. Illustrations by Claire Almon artfully place readers in the terrain and the era when Mary made her mark.
Ages 4-9. Albert Whitman & Company, 2024
The Smithsonian National Postal Museum features the photo below and more details of Mary’s life.
