Calamity Jane

Era: 19^th Century

Importance: Show-woman and shooter

Module: American West

Calamity Jane

Born Martha Jane Canary on 1^st May 1852 in Princeton, Missouri. She was an orphan by the age of fifteen and began wandering the mining districts earning her money telling tall tales and with her skill with a pistol.

She was a common and familiar sight in 1870s Deadwood. She married in 1891 to a Clinton Burke who soon deserted her. She was in Wild West shows and claimed to have been present or involved in most of the significant events in the recent history of the West.

The origins of her nickname are uncertain – for her hard luck times, for her enemies who definitely dealt with danger or her charity and generosity to those in direst need.

She died in 1903 in Terry, South Dakota and is buried with Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood