Mary Fields

The First Black Woman to Carry Mail for the U.S. Post Office

Mary Fields against the beautiful Montana landscape.

Though born a slave, Mary Fields enjoyed freedom in Cascade, Montana, a pioneer community where she developed a reputation for being a tough, ill-tempered, gun-toting, black female who could hold her own with the rowdiest white men of the era. Also known as Black Mary and Stagecoach Mary, she braved the unforgiving Montana winters and fearlessly protected the stagecoach from bandits and predatory animals in her quest to deliver mail via wagon for the United States Post Office Department. She was only the second woman and the first black female contracted to do so.

One steamboat on which Mary Fields worked was the Robert E. Lee, dubbed the “Monarch of the Mississippi.” Coming in at a massive 297 feet by 49 feet, it was built in New Albany, Indiana in 1866 for $200,000. Oil painting by August Norieri. In the public domain.

Mary Fields was born into slavery in Hickman County, Tennessee sometime in 1832. Her place of birth remains a mystery and nothing is known of her early years. In the time before the Civil War, she was owned by a family known as the Warners, but she received her freedom as a result of the war. Mary left the Warner family and worked as a chambermaid and laundress on steamboats that chugged along the Mississippi River. Around this time, she made the acquaintance of Judge Edmund Dunne and took a position as a household staff member of the Dunne family.

One of Judge Dunne’s younger sisters was Sarah Theresa Dunne, who established a lifelong friendship with Mary. As a child, Sarah was accidentally poisoned, and she developed asthma and several other health issues that plagued her throughout her life. Sarah and her older sister, Mary, were students at an Ursuline boarding school, and years later, in 1861, Sarah entered the Ursuline convent in Toledo, Ohio, and took her vows three years later. She adopted the name Mary Amadeus and became mother superior of the convent in 1872. In 1884, Mother Mary Amadeus founded a new mission school for girls at the St. Peter's Mission near Cascade, Montana, a small railroad town in Central Montana. The next year, Mother Mary Amadeus, who was not fit for the isolated pioneer life, caught pneumonia and soon found herself on the brink of death.

Mother Mary Amadeus. Courtesy of the Ursuline Sisters of Great Falls.

When Mary Fields heard her friend was gravely ill, she left Ohio and headed west to offer her services. With her old friend attending to her, Mother Mary Amadeus made a full recovery, and she asked Mary Fields to stay on and work at the convent. Mary happily agreed to it. She acted as foreman during the repair of the mission’s buildings then fell into a routine of washing laundry, managing the kitchen, buying needed supplies, tending to the garden, and maintaining the grounds. But Mary Fields, who stood six feet tall and weighed some two hundred pounds, proved to be rougher around the edges than the nuns or the bishop liked. She brazenly wore men’s jackets and boots and exhibited an unsparing temper with little provocation. And she didn’t hold back from cursing, smoking, or drinking in front of the keepers of the convent.

When an argument between Mary and a hired male worker threatened gunplay, with the two drawing loaded weapons on each other, her employment ended. The bishop ordered her to leave. Mary settled in nearby Cascade, Montana, where she opened a restaurant that failed from the start. A series of odd jobs followed, and in 1895, after hitching up a team of six horses faster than any other applicant, Mary secured a contract with the United States Post Office Department to deliver mail as a coach driver. She was awarded two four-year contracts on the star route, which is a thinly populated route in a rural area served by a private mail carrier. In this way, she carried mail in the rocky terrain of the Cascade County region for eight years straight without missing a day. In time, she became a legend in the role and earned the nickname Stagecoach Mary on the strength of her success in delivering mail on a regular schedule.

“When an argument between Mary and a hired male worker threatened gunplay, with the two drawing loaded weapons on each other, her employment ended.”

After her second contract expired, she retired as a mail carrier at the age of 71 and settled in Cascade by opening a laundry business and babysitting children in her home. Mary died in Cascade in 1914. She was also buried there by neighbors in the Hillside Cemetery, with a simple wooden crucifix marking the grave.

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This article appears in 45 People, Places, and Events in Black History You Should Know.

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