Her pioneering and caring spirit brought her to Central Montana in 1884 to take care of ailing Mother Amadeus at St. Peter's Mission, an early Catholic settlement northwest of Cascade. She helped the mission with farming, construction, laundry, and driving a freight wagon to town, before settling in Cascade in the early 1900s. She started her own businesses, doing laundry, babysitting, and running
various eateries, before landing the Star Route mail contract. As the nation's first African American mail carrier and just the second woman in this job, Mary blazed trails. Stagecoach Mary was a revered member of the community, a fearless force, and an early entrepreneur. Her love for baseball earned her the title of mascot for the town of Cascade's community ball team. She reportedly babysat for Western actor and Helena native Gary Cooper in the early 1900s and rubbed shoulders with Western fine artist Charlie M. Russell, who lived in Cascade in the late 1800s. In recognition of her achievements, Mary was inducted into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame and honored with a star on the Texas Trail in Fort Worth. The Mary Fields Statue Committee was organized in 2022 as a 501-c3 nonprofit organization. Its mission is to erect a memorial statue in Mary's likeness in Cascade, Montana, where she lived, worked, and made history.
