Stagecoach Mary and her 1876 Carbine

[ndnchf]

A cool photo and story.



Mary Fields, also known as Stagecoach Mary (c. 1832 – 1914), was the first African-American woman employed as a mail carrier in the United States, and just the second American woman to work for the United States Postal Service.  Fields stood 6 feet tall and weighed about 200 lbs, liked to smoke cigars, and was once said to be as "black as a burnt-over prairie (black)." She usually had a pistol strapped under her apron and a jug of whiskey by her side.

Born a slave in Hickman County, Tennessee around 1832, Fields was freed when slavery was outlawed in 1865. She then worked in the home of Judge Edmund Dunne. When Dunne's wife Josephine died in 1883 in San Antonio, Florida, Fields took the family's five children to their aunt, Mother Mary Amadeus, the mother superior of an Ursuline convent in Toledo, Ohio. In 1884, Mother Amadeus was sent to Montana Territory to establish a school for Native American girls at St. Peter's Mission, west of Cascade. Learning that Amadeus was ill, Fields hurried to Montana to nurse her. Amadeus recovered and Fields stayed at St. Peter's hauling freight, doing laundry, growing vegetables, tending chickens, repairing buildings and eventually becoming the forewoman.

The Native Americans called Fields "White Crow" because "she acts like a white woman but has black skin." Local whites did not know what to make of her. One schoolgirl wrote an essay saying: "she drinks whiskey, and she swears, and she is a republican, which makes her a low, foul creature." In 1894, after several complaints and an incident with a disgruntled male subordinate that involved gunplay, the bishop ordered her to leave the convent.  Mother Amadeus helped her open a restaurant in nearby Cascade. Fields would serve food to anyone, whether they could pay or not, and the restaurant went broke in about ten months.  In 1895, although approximately 60 years old, Fields was hired as a mail carrier because she was the fastest applicant to hitch a team of six horses.  She drove the route with horses and a mule named Moses. She never missed a day, and her reliability earned her the nickname "Stagecoach." If the snow was too deep for her horses, Fields delivered the mail on snowshoes, carrying the sacks on her shoulders.  Fields was a respected public figure in Cascade, and on her birthday each year the town closed its schools to celebrate. When Montana passed a law forbidding women to enter saloons, the mayor of Cascade granted her an exemption.  Mary Fields died of liver failure in 1914.

Quite a woman, and not one I'd care to tangle with.  No doubt she knew how to use that '76!

[dusty texian]

Thank's ndnchf, that is a good story and photo. ,,,,,Dusty

[King Medallion]

Talk about dredging up an old thread just to spam it.  To make it somewhat relative, I sent a message to the illinois dnr about the legality of using the 45/60 for deer hunting. It's not on the list, but I want to find out for sure and if not legal, why not. Illinois is allowing single shot rifles this year. To make my 76 legal, or any rifle, it has to be modified to allow only a round in the chamber. So that means a dowl in the mag tube. easy.

[Roosterman]

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Right.....I'll be all over that.

[Johnson Barr]

  King the quickest way to render your rifle to single shoot status would be to remove the carrier block, lifter arm and lifter arm spring. A shim washer the thickness of the lifter arm will need to be installed to take up the gap between the finger lever and frame cut.
  Several years ago an original '73 was found abandoned leaning against a juniper tree in a National Park in Nevada. A search for the 'Lost '73' will generate many articles and videos. It was speculated that the Rifle had been de-militarized (made into a single shot) for sale in Indian trading posts of the day. X-rays showed a round in the chamber and extra rounds in the cleaning rod chamber of the butt stock.
  I made the conversion to my '73 Uberti rifle and successfully created a single shot rifle. Magazine tube is left in place and useless without the carrier block to retain any cartridges in the tube. The lever will still cycle the bolt, cock the hammer and extract a fired case from the chamber. The only trick is loading the chamber with out a fumble. A dropped cartridge will fall through the Carrier mortise cut to the ground. I found that if I kept my left hand cupped under the mortise cut the fall was much shorter and didn't require the bend and stoop retrieval method.  Best of luck with your hunt this fall, 

[King Medallion]

Sounds like it would be easier just to slide an appropriate length wooden dowel into the mag tube, 1 screw and done.

[Abilene]

  King the quickest way to render your rifle to single shoot status would be to remove the carrier block, lifter arm and lifter arm spring. A shim washer the thickness of the lifter arm will need to be installed to take up the gap between the finger lever and frame cut.
  Several years ago an original '73 was found abandoned leaning against a juniper tree in a National Park in Nevada. A search for the 'Lost '73' will generate many articles and videos. It was speculated that the Rifle had been de-militarized (made into a single shot) for sale in Indian trading posts of the day. X-rays showed a round in the chamber and extra rounds in the cleaning rod chamber of the butt stock.
  I made the conversion to my '73 Uberti rifle and successfully created a single shot rifle. Magazine tube is left in place and useless without the carrier block to retain any cartridges in the tube. The lever will still cycle the bolt, cock the hammer and extract a fired case from the chamber. The only trick is loading the chamber with out a fumble. A dropped cartridge will fall through the Carrier mortise cut to the ground. I found that if I kept my left hand cupped under the mortise cut the fall was much shorter and didn't require the bend and stoop retrieval method.  Best of luck with your hunt this fall,

Since the rising carrier hits the empty case being extracted to kick it (eject) away, how is ejection on the modified rifle?  Does the empty need to be grabbed with the fingers or does it end up falling out the bottom, or does it eject out the top okay but just weakly?

[King Medallion]

I would suspect it would just fall out the bottom, to be lost forever 30 feet below the stand. I'm gonna stick with the wooden dowel in the mag tube.

[Johnson Barr]

 You would still have to monkey with the lever to get the carrier out of the way to load over the top. Ejection would flip the empty over your shoulder before the 30' fall to the ground.

My personal interest really comes from my previous employment with the National Park Service at Theodore Roosevelt NP in North Dakota. Quite a few TR guns at the South Unit Headquarters in Madora worth visiting. The find of the '73 in Great Basin NP was quite a buzz when I was there last time. My wonderment came from trying to duplicate the Lost '73 by using my own Uberti '73 rifle. I'm a blackpowder shooter so complete rifle disassembly is an every time I shoot it thing. Simply by leaving out those missing parts of the  found relic rifle on my workbench I was able to replicate the relic. Shooting was no problem with my off hand cupping the receiver under the carrier mortise when loading the chamber or extraction. Most times the empty case was still captured by the extractor. A simple finger push dropped the empty case into the palm of my hand. The only modification was the addition of washer to make up the thickness of the lifter where the lever screw passes through the side plates and receiver.  I have a can full of washers in my workshop, probably took all of 30 seconds to find one to do the job. 
Just one of those 'how does it work' things that I wanted to see for myself. It works just like it did for a sheep herder 100+ years ago that leaned his rifle against a Juniper tree and walked away.

[Oregon Bill]

I found a little more information about Mary Fields in Tricia Wagner's "African American Women of the Old West." It took some real grit for women like Mary to make their own way in that time and place, God rest her soul.