She was born a slave and freed when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued (she was about 30)
She was about six feet tall and 200 pounds and once she was free she decided she’d never take shit from anyone ever again
When one of her close friends, a nun by the name of Mother Amadeus, became ill with pneumonia at her convent in Montana, Mary headed alone into the frontier to nurse Mother Amadeus back to health
After Mother Amadeus recovered, she gave Mary a job as the foreman of the convent. She repaired buildings, took care of chickens, made the long and dangerous journeys into town for supplies, and did other odd jobs.
She could drink most men under the table, and one saloon offered five bucks and a free shot of whiskey to any man who could take a punch to the face from Mary and remain standing.
She was once said by a local paper to have broken more noses than anyone else in Montana
She was outspokenly Republican, which at this time was the liberal party in America, and would get into political debates with the more conservative townsfolk
One time a man insulted her outside the saloon so hit him in the face with a rock, and only stopped when other cowboys held her back.
On one supply run into town, her wagon overturned and the horses fled. Mary spent all night single-handedly fending off a pack of wolves with her guns before she righted the heavy wagon by herself and tracked down the spooked horses. The only thing lost in the accident was a jar of molasses.
She lost her job at the convent when she got into a gunfight with a male employee who did not want to take orders from a black woman. She reportedly shot him in the ass, which angered the local bishop.
After losing her convent job, Mary spent a brief time running a restaurant, where she welcomed and served all comers
When a job for a mail carrier opened at the local US Post Office, Mary got the job because she managed to hitch six horses to a wagon faster than any of the male candidates
She was sixty at the time
This made her the first black woman mail carrier, and the second woman mail carrier in US history
When the snows were too deep for the horses to manage the long and dangerous delivery routes, Mary would strap on snowshoes, put the bags of mail on her shoulders, and do it herself
At one point she apparently had a pet eagle????
She only retired from the mail route when she was about 70 years old, and instead made a quieter living by babysitting and running a laundry business in the town of Cascade
She was a huge baseball fan and often gave the local team a big bouquet of flowers from her garden
The people of Cascade loved Mary so much that they closed the schools annually on her birthday
When a law was passed in Montana that forbade women from drinking in saloons, the mayor of Cascade granted Mary an exemption.
When her house burned down, the whole town got together to help her build a new one
She continued drinking, fighting, and going to baseball games until she died of liver failure at 82 in 1914
Mary (far right) and the local baseball team
Anyway sorry for gushing I just now heard about her and I’m in love
I’ve heard of her, but godDAMN, if her story doesn’t bear repeating. ^w^
so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god
okay so i just got my dream job??? a week after applying to it?? and now i’m thinking….maybe this is the good luck post
…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment
likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post
we are already living in the cyberpunk future and i know this because within a span of 3 days we went from this tweet:
to thousands of people making phony images and replying to them with their passionate desire to have them as a tshirt to overload the bots with nonsense and junk and send out warnings to shoppers like this:
Anonymous asked: Hi! Do you know what happened to ml-fics tumblr? I can't find it and I really wanted to look for new ml fics to read. Any recommendation?
Does anyone know if they changed their username and moved somewhere else????
Anyway, I don’t have an organized list of fics handy, but here’s some great ML writers to check out (and apologies in advance, I know I’m going to forget some really amazing ones):
I’m really sorry, know I missed a ton of other really great ones and will probably be really embarrassed about it afterwards, so everyone please feel free to comment/reblog with more of your favorites that I forgot to include, or if you have a particular favorite fic you’d like to share!