True Life Tuesday: Nellie Cashman

Here we are - another story that could be made into a movie. This woman was quite a character in the old west.

Ellen "Nellie" Cashman was born in 1844 or 1845 in Midleton, County Cork, Ireland. She came to the US in 1850 with her mother and sister Fanny and they settled in Boston As a teenager she worked as a bellhop at a hotel in the city. In 1865 the family moved to San Francisco. She lived there until 1874 when she moved to Cassiar County, British Columbia. Here she set up a boarding house for the local miners. 

At one point Nellie heard about a snow storm that was moving through the mountain stranding and injuring 26 miners. The Canadian Army stated that conditions were to dangerous to attempt a rescue. Nellie though decided to take a team of 6 men to look for the miners. After 77 days they found them although there were more than the 26 originally believed to be there. It is though that there were over 70 miners there. This act earned her the nickname of "Angel of the Cassiar".

In 1880 Nellie moved to Tombstone, Arizona. While there she was very busy. She built a church, did charity work, worked as a nurse along with opening a restaurant and boarding house. In 1881 his sister Fanny was widowed and Nellie had her and her five children brought to nearby Tucson. When Fanny dies from tuberculosis in 1884 she took guardianship of the children. 

In 1898 she went toi the Yukon to search for gold. While there she was the first woman to cast a vote in 1912 however it is not known if she knew that it was illegal. On January 4, 1925 she passed away from pneumonia and rheumatism at the hospital she helped to build in Tombstone. She was buried in British Columbia.

Nellie received many honors after her death. On October 18, 1994 she was placed on a postage stamp as a part of the Legends of the West series. On March 15, 2006 she was inducted in the Alaska Mining Hall of Fame. She was also inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in 2007. Finally, in June 2014 there was a statue erected in her honor near her childhood home in Ireland.