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Biography of Calamity Jane
Name: Calamity Jane
Birth Date: May 1, 1852
Death Date: August 1, 1903
Place of Birth: Princeton, Missouri, United States
Nationality: American
Gender: Female
Occupations: frontierswoman
Calamity Jane
Martha Jane Cannary, known as Calamity Jane (1852-1903), was a notorious American frontier woman in the days of the Wild West. As unconventional and wild as the territory she roamed, she has become a legend.The most likely date of Jane Cannary's birth is May 1, 1852, probably at Princeton, Missouri. When she was 12 or 13, the family headed west along the Overland Route, reaching Virginia City, Montana, five months later. En route Jane learned to be a teamster and to snap 30-foot bullwhackers. Her father died in 1866 and her mother died a year later. Late in 1867 Jane was in Salt Lake City.Until the early 1870s nothing more is known of Jane. Then she appeared at Rawlins, Wyo., where she dressed and acted like a man and hired out as a mule skinner, bullwhacker, and railroad worker. "Calamity" became part of her name; she was proud of it.In 1875 Calamity went with Gen. …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…for her daughter's education. A successful benefit was held at the Old Opera House. In 1900 Calamity appeared briefly at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., as a Western attraction, but she was homesick for the West and soon went back. In poor health, in July 1903 she arrived at the Calloway Hotel in Terry, near Deadwood, where she died on August 1 or 2. She was buried next to Wild Bill Hickok. Further Reading The work with the best scholarly research on Calamity Jane is Nolie Mumey, Calamity Jane, 1852-1903: A History of Her Life and Adventures in the West (1950), but the book is difficult to find because it was published in a limited edition. More readily available and also good is John Leonard Jennewein, Calamity Jane of the Western Trails (1953), which separates fact from fiction whenever possible. A short, interesting, debunking account of Calamity Jane is in James D. Horan, Desperate Women (1952).
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