Stagecoach Mary

A six-foot former slave with a short temper.  A woman of the Victorian age who smoked her own homemade cigars.  A fighter who refused to let anyone trample on her rights and hard-won privileges.  The second woman ever to drive a U.S. mail coach.  Mary Fields was a unique woman of the frontier.

Photo credit: Ursuline Convent Archives, Toledo, OH

In 1884, Mary Fields left Ohio to work in Montana as a laborer in helping build a convent.  The St. Peter's Mission was established by nuns whose work was converting Indians to Christianity.  Mary chopped wood, did stone work and rough carpentry and dug latrines.  Because of the extreme cold, she dressed like a man, except for a long dress and apron she wore over a pair of pants. This covering for her 200 pound-plus frame made her an unforgettable sight.

She was never without her .38 Smith & Wesson strapped under her apron, and her shotgun was ever-ready. It was said "Black Mary," as she was sometimes called, could whip any two men in the territory, and the local paper claimed she had broken more noses than any other person in central Montana.

One such dispute got her banished from the mission.  Another hired hand confronted her with the complaint that she was earning $2 a month more than he was, and asked why she thought that she was worth so much money anyway, being only an uppity

colored woman? He carried his complaints to the public at Mary's favorite saloon, and then to the bishop who ran the mission.  Shortly after, Mary tried to shoot the man as he cleaned out the latrine--figuring to dump his body in there--but she missed.  He returned fire, and during the ensuing shoot-out, a bullet shot by Mary bounced off the stone wall of the nunnery and hit the man in the buttock. Other bullets Mary fired passed through the laundry of the bishop, which was hanging on the line, generously ventilating his drawers and the two white shirts he had had shipped from Boston only the week before.

That was enough for the bishop; he fired Mary, and gave the injured man a raise.

In 1895, Mary landed a job carrying the United States Mail.  Over eight years, she never missed a day, delivering letters and parcels no matter what the weather, nor how rugged the terrain. She and her mule, Moses, plunged through anything, from bitterly raw blizzards to wilting heat, reaching remote miner's cabins and other outposts with important mail. These efforts on her part helped to advance the development of a considerable portion of central Montana, a contribution for which she is given little credit.

Known by then as Stagecoach Mary, she worked until well into her sixties. She retired from the mail delivery business, and at the age of seventy opened a laundry

service.  She spent a considerable portion of her time in the local saloon, drinking whiskey and smoking her foul cigars with sweating and dusty men who were attracted to the place.  Mary Fields died in 1914 from liver failure.

Coffee in the Old West
• Man At The Pot - According to camp etiquette, when a cowboy got up to refill his cup from the coffee pot hanging over the campfire, if someone shouted, “Man at the pot!” the man at the coffee pot was required to fill everyone’s cup.
• Back in the day, somebody who sat too long around the coffee pot when there was work to be done was known as a Coffee Boiler.
• The diet of miners and other newcomers to the Old West included just a few basic drinks, generally coffee and tea. “I feel greatly the want of counsel and advice from you or others in biscuit-making and in some approved, or improved, method of brewing coffee,” wrote one 49er gold miner to his wife. “I have always been inclined to deride the vocation of ladies until now.”
• Coffee was called by many names back then: Arbuckle’s (a popular brand), belly-wash, brown gargle.  People drank it “strong enough to float a colt.”

Our award-winning coffee is grown sustainably in the highlands of Brazil on a fair-wage farm.  Features an Arabica blend that is dark, smooth and rich.  Net Weight 12 oz.