Nellie Cashman

Nellie Cashman
Ellen Cashman

Ellen Cashman
Born 1845 (1845)
County Cork, Ireland
Died January 4, 1925 (1925-01-05)
Victoria, British Columbia
Occupation nurse, entrepreneur and gold prospector

Ellen Cashman (1845 – January 4, 1925), better known as Nellie Cashman, was a native of County Cork, Ireland, who became famous across the American and Canadian west as a nurse and gold prospector.

Contents

Early years

Cashman came to the United States around 1850 with her mother and her sister. she was very poor and she was a woman explorer who liked to explore

British Columbia

A few years later, the Gold rush era came, and Nellie, willing to become an adventurous woman, left her family home in 1874, heading to the Cassiar Mountains, in British Columbia, Canada. A lifelong Catholic woman, she set up a boarding house for miners, asking them for donations to be made for the Sisters of St. Anne in return for receiving the services available at her boarding house.

Cashman travelled to Victoria, to deliver 500 dollars received in donations, to the nuns of the Sisters of St. Anne, when she heard that a snowstorm had attacked the Cassiar mountains area, stranding and injuring 26 miners, who were also suffering from scurvy. She immediately organized an expedition with six men and collected food and medicines, planning to find the men and rescue them.

Conditions at the Cassiar Mountains were so dangerous during the time, that not even the Canadian Army considered it a worthy task to try to rescue the twenty six stranded men. When they heard of Cashman's expedition, a commander sent his troops to find her and bring her and her group of men back safely.

An Army trooper found her standing over the ice of Stikine River, cooking her meal for the evening. She offered the trooper and a few other men from his group some tea, and convinced them that it was her will to continue and she would not head back without rescuing the men.

After 77 days of unfriendly weather, she found the sick men, which, as it turned out, were more than twenty six; some estimates put the number of lives that Cashman and her crew saved as many as seventy five men. She used a Vitamin C diet to re-establish the group's health. Thereafter, she was fondly known in the region as the "Angel of the Cassiar".

Arizona

Later on in life, she moved to Tombstone, Arizona, where she kept working for her Catholic faith. She raised money to build the Sacred Heart Catholic Church there, and she worked with the Sisters of St. Joseph's. She also kept her work as a caretaker, getting a job as a nurse in a local Cochise hospital.

After her brother-in-law's death in 1881, Nellie invited her sister, Fanny, to move to Nellie's home in Tombstone along with her five children. However, Fanny died two years later, leaving Nellie as the only caretaker of the five children, whom she came to love as if they were her own children.

Nellie still hoped to find gold someday, and she travelled to Baja California, Mexico, soon after her sister's death, after hearing rumors that gold and silver could also be found there. With 100 miles to reach their destination, Nellie decided that six men would lead the group that she was travelling with, which consisted of Nellie and twenty-one men. After sixteen hours, however, most of the men in the group had suffered dehydration from the Arizona heat. As a consequence, the group's water supply was almost gone. Many historians propose that Nellie and the twenty one men were rescued by Mexicans.

In December of that year, a group of bandits tried to commit a robbery in Bisbee. The robbery went wrong, and many innocents were killed. Five men were captured and taken to trial. They were sentenced to capital punishment; the date of March 28 of 1884 was set for their hanging.

Citizens in Tombstone were very angry at the men that were found guilty, and most of them overjoyed that they would be hanged. Soon after the sentence was announced, sheriff J.L. Ward ran out of courtesy tickets to the event, so a local carpenter built a grandstand next to the courthouse, planning to charge for tickets.

Cashman was indignant at the behavior of the citizens of Tombstone, feeling that no death should be celebrated. She befriended the five convicts, visiting them constantly to provide them with spiritual guidance. She spoke to the sheriff about the upcoming event, pleading with him to put a curfew in place during the day of the hangings so that no crowds would stand by the street to watch. The sheriff conceded, and a curfew was set.

Next, she and some friends went at night to the site of the execution, destroying the grandstand with hammers and axes. While the hangings proceeded as scheduled, the public was unable to watch, and Nellie achieved what she wanted: the five men died feeling that a small portion of dignity had been restored to them.

Later on, she found out that a medical school planned to dig up the bodies of the five convicts, to be used as study corpses. She had two prospectors stay ten nights at the Boot Hill Cemetery, to ensure that the bodies stayed in the graves.

Nellie co-owned and ran a restaurant and hotel in Tombstone called Russ House (now known as Nellie Cashman's). Her partner in this enterprise was Joseph Pascholy. [Citation: advertisement in the 1881 Tombstone Epitaph.] According to a popular legend, once, a client complained about Nellie's cooking, and Doc Holliday drew his side arm, asking the customer to repeat what he had said. Embarrassed, the client replied, "Best I ever ate."

In 1886, she left Tombstone to travel all across Arizona, setting restaurants and boarding houses in Nogales, Jerome, Prescott, Yuma and Harquahala, near Phoenix.

Yukon and Alaska

In 1898, she left Arizona for the Yukon, staying there until 1905. This move was once again motivated by her dream of finding gold during the Klondike Gold Rush. She owned a store in Dawson City. She searched for gold in the Klondike, Fairbanks and Nolan Creek.

In 1921, she visited California, where she declared that she'd like to be appointed U.S. deputy Marshal for the area of Koyukuk. In 1922, the Associated Press documented her trip from Nolan Creek to Anchorage.

In 1925, Cashman began suffering from pneumonia and rheumatism. Her friends took her to the same hospital she had helped built 51 years before, the Sisters of St. Anne. Ironically, she died soon afterwards in that institution. She was interred at Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria, British Columbia.

On March 15, 2006, Nellie Cashman was inducted into the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame.

The role of Nellie Cashman, revised as a saloonkeeper in Tombstone, was played by actress Randy Stuart in the 1959 to 1960 season of the ABC television series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, with Hugh O'Brian as Wyatt Earp.

References


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Nellie Cashman — Ellen Cashman Nacimiento 1845 …   Wikipedia Español

  • 1925 — This article is about the year 1925. Millennium: 2nd millennium Centuries: 19th century – 20th century – 21st century Decades: 1890s  1900s  1910s  – 1920s –  1930s   …   Wikipedia

  • List of people on stamps of the United States — This article lists people who have been featured on United States postage stamps. Since the United States Post Office issued its first stamp in 1847, over 4,000 stamps have been issued and over 800 people featured. Many of these people… …   Wikipedia

  • Irish diaspora — Emigrants Leave Ireland , engraving by Henry Doyle (1827–1892), from Mary Frances Cusack s Illustrated History of Ireland, 1868 …   Wikipedia

  • List of Irish people — This is a list of famous Irish people.It covers * People who were born on the island of Ireland and/or who have lived there for most of their lives. * People who, though not necessarily ever having been born or lived in Ireland, have been raised… …   Wikipedia

  • Stalwart Women — Stalwart Women: Frontier Stories of Indomitable Spirit (ISBN 0 916179 77 X) is a book which was written by Leo Banks and published by Nina M. LaFrance and the Arizona Department of Transportation in 1999. The book contains work that was… …   Wikipedia

  • Ross Bay Cemetery — Ross Bay Cemetery, located at 1516 Fairfield Road in Victoria, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island, Canada was opened in 1873. The 27.5 acre (111,000 m²) cemetery is part of a public park and its south side faces Ross Bay on the Pacific Ocean.… …   Wikipedia

  • The Yukon Trail — Infobox VG title = The Yukon Trail developer = MECC publisher = MECC designer = ??? released = December 31, 1994 genre = Simulation, educational, strategy modes = Single player platforms = Windows, System 7 media = CD ROM input = Mouse The Yukon… …   Wikipedia

  • Cassiar Country — The Cassiar Country, also referred to simply as the Cassiar, is one of the historical geographic regions of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The Cassiar is located in the northwest portion of British Columbia, just to the northeast of… …   Wikipedia

  • Paula Begoun — is the author and publisher of several books on the beauty industry. Paula Begoun has sold more than 2.5 million copies of her books and is also a syndicated columnist, with her “Dear Paula” column appearing in papers throughout North America.For …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”