Infamous Deadwood: Calamity Jane
Martha Canary was born in Princeton, Missouri in 1856. In 1863, (Martha Jane was 7 years old) her family left MO and headed for the coal fields of Montana. Within two years, she lost both parents, leaving her, at the age of 11, and her five siblings orphans. Calamity Jane survived by any means possible, meaning she followed railroad, military, and gold camps across Wyoming Territory. She was on the Newton-Jenny Expedition in 1875 and General Crook’s expedition of 1876. Calamity Jane would dress in soldier’s uniforms to avoid detection. She joined the Wagon Train that included Wild Bill and Charlie Utter in Fort Laramie, WY. Jane was loud, profane, and often drunk – she was also widely known. She worked hard to fit into a man’s world, and made her living in a variety of ways by cooking, cleaning, waitressing, dance hall girl, and as a prostitute, but she had a soft side – she tended to the sick (smallpox epidemic). She was not romantically involved with Wild Bill as legend has it. She was in and out of Deadwood many times, was married several times, and was a mother to a daughter and a son. She came back to the Black Hills in 1903, but she was in tough shape from her hard-living lifestyle. She died on August 1, 1903, in Terry, about 7 miles south of Deadwood. Deadwood businessmen wasted no time going to get her body and burying her next to Wild Bill Hickok. She was 47 years old.
Information provided by Deadwood History Inc.
