Ellen Cashman (1845 – January 4, 1925), better known as Nellie Cashman, was a native of County Cork, Ireland, who became famous across the United States west as a caretaker and gold prospector.
Cashman came to the United States around 1850 with her mother and her sister. She had lost her father a short time before. In 1865, the Cashman girls arrived in San Francisco, California, where they settled a new home.
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 , at 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 of a disease named 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 Stickeen 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.
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. But Fanny passed away two years later, leaving Nellie as the only caretaker of the five children, whom she came to love as if they were her own kids.
Nellie still hoped to find gold someday, and she travelled to Baja California, Mexico, soon after her sister's death, on 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 about the fact they would be hung. 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 indignated by 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 accorded, no one was able 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 Boothill cemetary , to ensure that the men stayed in their graves, and no one came to ask for the bodies.
Nellie owned a restaurant and hotel in the Tombstone area. 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. Embarrased, 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 Harqua Hala , located close to Phoenix.
In 1898, she left Arizona for Alaska, staying there until 1905. This move was once again, motivated by her dream of finding gold. She owned a store in Alaska. In that state, she searched for gold in Dawson , 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 of pneumonia and rheumatism. Her friends took her to the same hospital she had helped built 51 years before, the Sisters of St. Anne hospital. Perhaps ironically, she died soon after in that institution.
Her sexual orientation was questioned across the west: many newspaper writers and civilians alike wondered why Cashman, considered a good looking woman by many, never actually got married. However, many also noted that she seemed to enjoy men.