Calamity Jane (May 1, 1852 - August 1, 1903)

Calamity Jane was born May 1, 1852, as Martha Jane Cannary in Princeton, Missouri. A popular belief is that she acquired her nickname as a result of her warnings to men that to offend her was to "court calamity". In 1865, her family packed up and moved by wagon train from Missouri to Virginia City, Montana. One sister died along the way in Black Foot, Montana in 1866 of "washtub pneumonia". After arriving in Virginia City in the spring of 1866, the family went on to Salt Lake City, Utah, where her father supposedly started farming on 40 acres of land. They were there only a year when he died in 1867. Martha Jane took over as head of the family, loaded up the wagon once more, and took her siblings to Fort Bridger, Wyoming Territory. They arrived in May 1868. From there they traveled on the Union Pacific Railroad to Piedmont, Wyoming. In Piedmont, Martha Jane took whatever jobs she could to provide for her large family. She worked as a dishwasher, a cook, a waitress, a dance-hall girl, a nurse, and an ox team driver. Finally, in 1874, she found work as a scout at Fort Russell. During this time period, she also began her on-and-off employment as a prostitute at the Fort Laramie Three-Mile Hog Ranch. In 1876, Calamity Jane settled in the area of Deadwood, South Dakota, in the Black Hills. There, she became friends with, and was occasionally employed by, Dora DuFran, the Black Hills' leading madam. She became friendly with Wild Bill Hickok. Jane greatly admired Hickok (to the point of infatuation) and she was obsessed with his personality and his life. After Hickok was killed during a poker game on August 2, 1876, Calamity Jane claimed to have been married to Hickok and that Hickok was the father of her child, who she said was born on September 25, 1873, and whom she later put up for adoption. No records are known to exist to prove the birth of a child and the romantic slant to the relationship might have been fabrication on her part. In 1893, Calamity Jane started to appear in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show as a horse rider and a trick shooter. She also participated in the Pan-American Exposition. At that time, she was depressed and an alcoholic. Jane’s addiction to liquor was evident even in her younger years. By the turn of the century, Madame Dora DuFran was still going strong when Jane returned to the Black Hills in 1903. For the next few months, Jane earned her keep by cooking and doing the laundry for Dora’s brothel girls in Belle Fourche. In July 1903, she traveled to Terry, South Dakota. While staying in the Calloway Hotel on August 1, 1903, she died at the age of 51. It was reported that she had been drinking heavily on board a train and became very ill. The train's conductor carried her off the train and to a cabin, where she died soon after. Calamity Jane was buried at Deadwood next to Wild Bill Hickok. The men who planned her funeral later stated that since Wild Bill Hickok had “absolutely no use” for Jane while he was alive, they decided to play a posthumous joke on Wild Bill Hickok by giving Calamity an eternal resting place by his side.