This is the story of Mary Fields, a woman who cared about three things: freedom, staying strapped, and delivering mail in an orderly and punctual manner! Born into slavery in 1832 not much is known about her childhood, but after the Civil War and her emancipation she took a job onboard a Mississippi steamboat. While working on the boat she met Judge Edmund Dunne. The two bonded and she ended up working as a maid in his home. Things are going fine until Dunne’s wife dies and he’s like, “Umm, I’m not really capable of doing much so can you take my five children and go live with my sister who’s a convent nun in Ohio?” So Mary takes his five children from Tennessee to Toledo, Ohio to begin a new life in a convent…sounds fun…
In 1884 Dunne’s sister, Mother Mary Amadeus is sent to Montana where she planned to set up a school for Indigenous girls, but she gets pneumonia real fast, and once again Mary has to travel across the country to Montana to take care of this lady. Mother Amadeus would recover, but Mary decided to stay at the new convent where she was tasked with what the other nuns referred to as “men’s work” which…okay, but she was kinda doing “everyone’s work”, she was cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry and stuff but also tending chickens, repairing buildings, HAULING FREIGHT, eventually she became forewoman of the whole operation.
The nuns were super stoked to have this extra capable 52-year-old powerhouse running things around the convent, BUT what they did not appreciate was her brashness, her confidence…and apparently PROLIFICALLY foul mouth! She was so good at her job though, they couldn’t really say anything until an incident in 1894 where she got into it with a male coworker and the two drew guns on each other. Like, this woman was a badass, I wish we could have kicked it!
So Mary is fired and forced to leave the convent for…I don’t know embarrassing a dude or dueling or something and she moves down the road and opens a tavern.
In 1895 Mary found a new job as a stagecoach mail delivery carrier. This made her the first Black Woman to work for the U.S. Postal Service. She would ride year-round throughout Montana, which is not easy terrain even for a carriage. If the weather was too difficult to ride a horse through she would just gather the mail up in a sack and deliver on foot with snowshoes! I should also mention that the whole time she was working she was strapped up! She carried several guns on her at all times to protect herself from wolves, bandits, and thieves. Throughout her entire career, she never missed a day of work and was always on time. The mail don’t even work that reliably today and we got Google Maps!
People LOVED Mary! In fact, when a law was passed banning Black Women from entering saloons in Montana the local townsfolk, as well as law enforcement, were like, “Well, obviously that doesn’t apply to Mary!” She retired in 1903 at the age of 71. She was so adored that when her house burned down in 1912 the townsfolk gathered up necessary materials and funds to rebuild it! Two years later Mary passed away at the age of 82. She was buried right outside of the Montana town she loved and was loved by. I am struck by the courage and dedication she had and am so impressed by the person she must have been. All of this reminds me that my mail still hasn’t come today, but when it does, I’ll collect it remembering Mary Fields and her contribution to Black History.
Comments