Mary Fields

The photographs on this page, brought to life.

Mary Fields, photographed about 1895, with her rifle and her dog. Unknown photographer. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

She was about sixty years old when she took the job, and she never missed a day. Mary Fields was born into slavery in Hickman County, Tennessee, around 1832. After emancipation she worked as a chambermaid on a Mississippi steamboat, then in domestic service, and in 1884 went out to Montana to work at St. Peter's Mission near Cascade — hauling, repairs, and the rest of what was then called men's work. In 1894 the convent expelled her after an incident with a disgruntled subordinate that involved gunplay. In 1895 she took a Star Route contract to carry the mail between Cascade and St. Peter's Mission, which made her the first African-American woman in the country to hold one. She kept it through two four-year terms, driving a stagecoach and going on snowshoes when the coach could not get through, carrying a .38 against wolves and thieves. They called her Stagecoach Mary because the mail always arrived. She retired at seventy-one, ran a laundry, and minded local children for a dollar fifty a day. Cascade closed its schools on her birthday, and exempted her from the rule that kept women out of the saloons. She died on 5 December 1914 in Great Falls. The wolf stories and the blizzard stories are told rather than documented. The contracts and the dates are real. If you know more, add it below. Compiled by MyHistoryStone from published reference sources, August 2026. Corrections welcome.