Day 9 From the Red Box

                                        
                          Stagecoach Mary

Mary Fields (also known as Stagecoach Mary, pictured) was the first African-American woman who worked as a mail carrier in the United States. She was born in Hickman County, Tennessee as a slave in 1832. However, she did not let that fact make her a life-long victim. Fields was also the second American woman in American history to work for the USPS.  She was an imposing figure of a woman who did not play around. Stagecoach Mary was a six foot, 200 pound woman who carried a jug of whiskey and concealed a service pistol underneath her work  apron.
When slavery was abolished in 1865, Fields went to work for the estate of a prominent Tennessee judge named Edmund Dunne. When Judge Dunne’s wife died, Fields took Dunne’s five children to their aunt. The children’s aunt was a nun named Mother Mary Amadeus. Mother Amadeus was a member of the Ursuline Convent in Toledo, Ohio.
In 1894, Stagecoach Mary and Mother Amadeus opened a restaraunt in Cascade, Montana. When the business went under in 1895, Mary took a job as a mail carrier. She got the job because she was the fastest applicant to hitch a team of six horses for a mail route. This was also the time she earned her nickname Stagecoach Mary. Her physical strength and reliability made her an excellent postal worker in the state of Montana.
Mary Fields’ legacy is still respected in the city of Cascade, Montana today. In 1996, actress and singer Dawnn Lewis played Stagecoach Mary  in the televsion movie The Cherokee Kid. Veteran actress Kimberly Elise (Set It Off, John Q) also played Stagecoach Mary in the 2012 television movie Hannah’s Lawhttp://blackbluedog.com/2013/02/news/your-black-history-meet-stagecoach-mary-the-first-black-female-mail-carrier/