Courtesy of Ursuline Archives, Toledo, OH

African Americans in the West were far more than cowboys and soldiers. African American men and women worked in every field.

One of the most famous worked delivering the mail in Cascade, Montana. She was Mary Fields.

Six feet tall, fond of cigars, and not one to back down in a fight, Mary Fields is a legend of the West. She was born enslaved in Tennessee. After freedom came she moved to Toledo, Ohio and worked for the Ursuline Sisters Convent there. Fields became friends with Mother Amadeus. Amadeus moved to Montana to establish a mission, and when she became ill Fields moved to Montana to care for her.

Fields stayed to help build the school at the mission, but had to leave after her habit of fighting and cursing got her into trouble with the local Bishop. The nuns then gave Fields money to open a restaurant in Cascade. However, she gave away too many meals and the business failed.

In 1895, Fields found her calling. She became a U.S. mail coach driver. She was known for her reliability and truly was stopped by "neither rain nor snow, nor sleet nor dark of night," nor even a pack of wolves! It was this job that gave Fields her nickname, Stagecoach Mary.

Fields lived in Cascade, Montana until her death in 1914. In 1949, the Hollywood movie star Gary Cooper told a reporter from Ebony magazine “Black Mary was one of the freest souls ever to draw a breath or a thirty-eight.”

Mary Fields was virtually the only African American in the Cascade region of Montana. Few African Americans lived in South Dakota as well, yet Lucretia Marchbanks (also known a Aunt Lou) succeeded there as a chef and manager.

Marchbanks came to the Black Hills in 1876 and worked as the cook and kitchen manager at the Grand Central Hotel in Deadwood. She then moved on to work at a mine and a boarding house in Lead. By 1883, Marchbanks opened her own hotel, the Rustic Hotel, in Sawpit Gulch.

The Black Hills Daily Times once wrote:

“ Aunt Lou is an old and respected colored lady ... Her accomplishments as culinary artist are beyond all praise. ... A skillful nurse as well as a fine cook and housekeeper, her services to the victims of mountain fever never have received an infinitesimal part of the praise to which they are richly entitled.”

Marchbanks sold her hotel in 1885 and bought a ranch near Beulah, Wyoming. She worked the ranch until her death in 1911.

Lavinia Prescott Ferguson Collection. Used by permission.

Texas had a much larger African American population than either Montana or South Dakota. It had been a slave state before the Civil War and after the war had the largest population of African Americans in the West. Because of its history, African Americans in Texas faced far more violence and discrimination than African Americans in more sparsely populated states. Yet, some became great successes--surprisingly quickly--after they became free.

Edward Homes Carrington (left) and his brother Albert (center) were both former slaves who became leaders in the black community in Austin, Texas. E.H. was the first African American property owner in Austin. He opened a general store in 1872. His brother Albert had a blacksmith shop behind the store and served as an alderman in 1884. He was the last black alderman in Austin until the 1970s. L.D. Lyons (right) was E.H.'s son-in-law. He took over the store around 1910 and became a community leader in his own right.