Calamity Jane

Lore & Background

Much of what we know about Calamity Jane's early life comes from an autobiographical booklet she dictated in 1896 for publicity purposes, which contains exaggerated or inaccurate information. She was born Martha Jane Canary on May 1, 1852, in Princeton, Mercer County, Missouri. Her father Robert Wilson Canary had a gambling problem. Jane was the eldest of six children.

In 1865, the family moved by wagon train to Virginia City, Montana. Her mother Charlotte died of pneumonia along the way in 1866 in Blackfoot, Montana. After arriving in Virginia City, Robert took the children to Salt Lake City, Utah, where he started farming on 40 acres. He died in 1867.

At age 14, Martha Jane took charge of her five younger siblings, loaded their wagon, and took the family to Fort Bridger, Wyoming Territory, arriving in May 1868. From there they traveled by Union Pacific Railroad to Piedmont, Wyoming. In Piedmont, she worked as a dishwasher, cook, waitress, dance hall girl, nurse, and ox team driver. She also reportedly began occasional employment as a prostitute at the Fort Laramie Three-Mile Hog Ranch.

Reader's Guide

In 1876, Calamity Jane settled in the area of Deadwood, South Dakota, in the Black Hills. There she became friends with Dora DuFran, the Black Hills' leading madam, and was occasionally employed by her. On September 6, 1941, the U.S. Department of Public Welfare granted old age assistance to a Jean Hickok Burkhardt McCormick who claimed to be the legal offspring of Martha Jane Canary and James Butler Hickok. She presented evidence that they had married at Benson's Landing, Montana Territory on September 25, 1873.

However, McCormick's claim has been vigorously challenged. Jane does seem to have had two or four daughters, though the father's identity is unknown. In the late 1880s, Jane returned to Deadwood with a child she said was her daughter. A benefit was held to raise money for her daughter's education at St. Martin's Academy in Sturgis, South Dakota.

The benefit raised a large sum; Jane got drunk and spent a considerable portion that same night and left with the child the next day. After Hickok's death, Jane claimed she went after his murderer Jack McCall with a meat cleaver. She later helped save passengers in an overland stagecoach by diverting Plains Indians in pursuit; stagecoach driver John Slaughter was killed, and Jane took over the reins and drove the stage on to Deadwood. In late 1876 or 1878, Jane nursed victims of a smallpox epidemic in the Deadwood area.

In 1881, she bought a ranch west of Miles City, Montana, along the Yellowstone River, where she kept an inn. She married Clinton Burk at El Paso in 1884, with whom she had a daughter born in 1883; Burk died in 1895. In 1893, she started appearing in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show as a storyteller. She also participated in the 1901 Pan-American Exposition.

A 1901 profile described her as bearing the scars of a dozen bullets and noted she had been honorably discharged from service in 1878 after helping build Fort Mead, South Dakota. Her addiction to liquor was evident even in her younger years; on June 10, 1876, she rented a horse and buggy in Cheyenne for a one-mile joy ride but was so drunk she passed her destination and ended up 90 miles away at Fort Laramie.