Calamity Jane
Martha Jane Cannary, better known as Calamity Jane, was an American frontierswoman. In addition to many exploits she was known for being an acquaintance of Wild Bill Hickok. Late in her life, she appeared in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition.
About Calamity Jane in brief
Martha Jane Cannary, better known as Calamity Jane, was an American frontierswoman. In addition to many exploits she was known for being an acquaintance of Wild Bill Hickok. Late in her life, she appeared in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. She is said to have exhibited compassion to others, especially to the sick and needy. This facet of her character contrasted with her daredevil ways and helped to make her a noted frontier figure. She was born on May 1, 1852, as Martha Jane Canary in Princeton, within Mercer County, Missouri. Her father Robert Wilson Cannary had a gambling problem, and little is known about her mother Charlotte M. Cannary. Jane was the eldest of six children, and had two brothers and three sisters. She worked as a dishwasher, cook, waitress, dance hall girl, nurse, and ox team driver. In 1874, she claimed she found work as a scout at Fort Russell. During that time, she also began her on-and-off employment as a prostitute at the Fort Laramie Three-Mile Hog Ranch. She moved on to a rougher, mostly outdoor and adventurous life on the Great Plains. She never saw a lynching and never in an Indian fight. It is possible that her nickname was not part of her name until the nickname was coined in 1876, with the headline: “The Dead Pioneer” It is certain that she was nicknamed by that headline because the Hickok wagon train was reported in the Black Pioneer Hills on July 15, 1876.
She died on July 17, 1904, at the age of 67. She left behind a husband and six children. She had no children of her own, but was married to Captain Jack Crawford, who served in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. She also had a daughter, Martha Jane, who was born in 1852. She lived in Missouri, and later moved to Wyoming, where she lived in Piedmont, Wyoming, until her death in 1904. She later moved back to Missouri to live with her husband, Robert, and their five children. Her husband died in 1867, and she went on to live in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1896, she wrote an autobiographical booklet that she dictated in 1896, written for publicity purposes. Some of the information in the pamphlet is exaggerated or even completely inaccurate. It was intended to help attract audiences to a tour she was about to begin, in which she appearing in dime museums around the United States. She claimed to have been christened “the heroine of the plains” by Capt. Egan, the post commander at Goose Creek, Wyoming where the town of Sheridan is now located. Captain Egan was killed in a skirmish during which six of the soldiers were killed and several severely wounded. When on returning to the Post we were ambushed about a mile and a half from our destination, I was riding in advance and on hearing the firing turned in my saddle and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle as though about to fall.
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This page is based on the article Calamity Jane published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
