While I do my best to remain impartial (ha!), I was thrilled when Mary Fields was chosen. She’s not as well known as many, and should be! Also, her photo has a habit of being misused in articles about Harriet Tubman. They were both strong-built women who had escaped slavery and forged paths of determination and no-nonsense, living in the USA around the same time. But their stories are quite different; let’s have a look.

Mary Fields is known for being the first Black woman to work as a mail carrier in the USA. She defied the odds not just because of her race and gender but also her age, as she was SIXTY-FIVE when she began that job.

Born in 1832, Mary lived a full and long life until she passed in 1914, aged around 82. For some perspective to many readers, World War 1 had started then. It can be easy sometimes for these stories to feel like they occurred much longer ago through the old, faded photographs. In fact, the current oldest living person was born in 1907 while Mary was alive, so some of our grandparents or great-grandparents (whereabouts) could have even shared a whiskey with her.

As a recently emancipated Black woman, Mary was not expected for her to be so sweary, drinky, cigar-puffing, fighty or headstrong – qualities which garnered her respect from some and disdain from others. The Civil War had seen an end to slavery, but it would take much longer to change the attitudes of many of her countryfolk (unfortunately, some still aren’t there today).

When Mary landed the mail carrier job – by outskilling the much younger male applicants – she really made her mark on history. While at first sounding like a dull job, as we think of our local posties and while we love ’em, it’s not precisely death-defying, is it? Well, it was back then! Travelling alone across vicious terrain, there was danger of the extreme weather and wild animals such as wolves and the worst monster of all – mankind. Bandits waited in these parts for such a super looting opportunity. Sometimes the stagecoach (“Oh THAT’s why she’s called Stagecoach Mary!”) would be stuck in mud or snow, and she would go on foot. The most important thing to her was getting every single letter and parcel delivered on time. Evri, take note. YOU HAVE CARS.

She worked diligently at this for eight years with whiskey for warmth and her multiple guns and wits for safety. Remember, she was 65 when she began, so she was around 73 at the end of this career. This work would be taxing for any other person at their absolute peak, which shows how strong she was physically as well as mentally. It wasn’t just Amazon impulse buys of cutlery organisers (look, it was one time, and my cutlery takes up way less space now); it was life-saving urgent medication and equipment and food, as well as perhaps old-time cutlery organisers.

Unlike many of these women I research, Mary Fields got to have a nice retirement, phew. I highly recommend reading more about her, as there are so many stories, several quite funny too, but I try to keep these FAIRLY brief, so I can’t put it all in.

Designing Mary Fields: The Miniature

Hooray, we have photos! That always helps! It also means I don’t need to do a huge amount of clothing research, as the gear she has in these photos is what she would have been wearing, so we don’t need to speculate.

Photographs are not flawless, though, as we have learnt so far, they sometimes don’t tell the whole story. She’s pictured in the most famous picture (the one at the start of the article) with a Winchester but was known for being brilliant with a shotgun (second pic, just by this text), so while tempting to copy the photo, let’s change it to a shotgun. She also loved her six-shooter (revolver) tucked beneath her apron, but shall we have it peeking out? I need to move it to her other hip so she can draw it from her right hand.

As always, the crude drawing is just a starting point! And I may be being a bit lazier with getting them looking human now that I know Marty will do a better version after (oh yeah you might have missed it, Martin Whitmore has drawn some INCREDIBLE art for you).

The arm resting the gun on her shoulder frees up one hand and the frontage of the mini, so more detail can be added. I’m unsure about the other hand holding the mail sack, but I think this could translate well through the sculpt when Alan makes it have some real heft; perhaps she is walking forward a bit, dragging it?

She currently doesn’t have a messenger bag on, but perhaps on the back? I like the idea of her feeling very weighed down by the post. I’m conscious of the weight of the mini as I’ve declared these will all be £5, but that’s making me think more about a fixed £5 price for a certain amount of time so that I can raise them later if I need to.

Her jacket to the side a bit to show her holster with the ol’ six shootie in it and a hipflask of her whiskey. Perhaps instead of a whole strap for that, it could be the strap for a messenger bag, with the hipflask attached at a buckle? The bag could be half open as it’s bursting with letters? Lots of perhaps, of course, as this is a COMMUNITY minis project, so I really want to hear your feedback. Also it still doesn’t mean I can please everyone, as I can’t take every suggestion, but they really have steered this so far, and I want them to continue to.

This article totally doesn’t show the hours I’ve spent this afternoon researching Mary and then little things like mail carriers uniforms, mail bags, gun types etc. Where has the day gone! Before I forget, later on, the uniforms are Cadet Gray.

What do you think?
-Annie