• Nellie Cashman (1845-1925) ... saved E. B. Gage, superintendent of the Grand Central Mining Company, who was to be kidnapped and lynched by outsmarting a group of lawless men
From the Desert USA website:
Described by her bioghapher, "Pretty as a Victorian cameo and, when necessary, tougher than two-penny nails," the extraordinary Nellie Cashman wandered frontier mining camps of the 1800s seeking gold, silver and a way to help others. Throughout the West, she was variously known as Frontier Angel, Saint of the Sourdoughs, Miner's Angel, Angel of the Cassair and The Angel of Tombstone...
Before long, Nellie joined a group of 200 Nevada miners headed to the Cassiar gold strike at Dease Lake in northern British Columbia. Here, too, she operated a boarding house for miners and gained notoriety for organizing a rescue caravan to a mining camp where a scurvy epidemic had broken out. Together with 6 men and pack animals loaded with 1,500 pounds of supplies, she completed the 77-day journey through as much as 10 feet of snow and arrived in time to nurse almost 100 sick miners back to health....
She was also active raising money for the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, the Miner's Hospital and amateur theatricals staged in Tombstone. She was famous for taking up collections to help those who had been injured or fallen on hard times, especially miners. Always the pragmatist, Nellie found the members of Tombstone's red-light district sympathetic and charitable to her causes, and relied on their generosity to help others in need.
Nellie's community services in Tombstone continued to expand. She served as an officer of her church to hear the impromptu confessions of 2 of the 5 men who were to be hanged for the Bisbee Massacre of December 1883. The following year, when a group of miners attempted to lynch mine owner E.B. Gage during a labor dispute, Nellie drove her buggy into the mob and rescued Gage, spiriting him away to Benson, Arizona...
There is even more to her history....
