On this day in 1903, one of the most famous female characters in the history of the American West died in South Dakota at the young age of 51. “Calamity Jane” was born Martha Jane Canary in 1852. According to her autobiography, she grew up in Missouri, the eldest of six children. When still a teenager, she and her family moved to Montana, then Utah. By the age of 14 she was an orphan, at which point she and her siblings moved to Wyoming, where Jane took on the responsibility of supporting the family with odd jobs. Where did she get her nickname? Jane wrote that she was part of the Wyoming militia that fought a number of battles with the local Native American tribes, and her nickname came from her battlefield experiences. Other people dispute that, saying that she got her name because she was “dissolute and devilish,” and that she “courted calamity.”
At some point, Jane met Wild Bill Hickok, and travelled with him on his wagon train to Deadwood South Dakota. Historians disagree on whether Wild Bill and Jane were married in Montana in 1873, but it is accepted fact that she had several daughters by unknown fathers. After Wild Bill was murdered while playing cards in a saloon, Jane led an itinerant life in South Dakota, Montana, Colorado, and elsewhere. She ended her life back in South Dakota, where she worked briefly at a brothel. She died in Deadwood on August 1, 1903, and is buried by Wild Bill’s side at the Mount Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood.
