Nellie objected adamantly to the circus that was surrounding the event. Outraged at the citizens’ behavior and feeling that no death should be “celebrated,” she soon befriended the five convicts, visiting them often and providing them with spiritual guidance. She pleaded with Sheriff Ward to place a curfew on the town during the time that the hangings were to take place. Ward conceded and the vast majority of interested onlookers were not allowed to watch the “event.

After they were executed, the men were buried in Tombstone's Boot Hill cemetery. Cashman also found out that there was a plan to rob the bodies from their graves for a medical school study. This, too, outraged her and she hired two prospectors to guard the graves for ten days, which were left undisturbed and remain at Boot Hill today.

Later that 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.

Because of her giving spirit, when she died she was known throughout the West and her eulogy was published in papers as far away as New York.

The diminutive woman, who often dressed as a man and never married, had made her mark as one of the first women entrepreneurs in the west, as well as a miner, and an “Angel of Mercy.” Throughout the various mining camps, she had variously been called the Frontier Angel, Saint of the Sourdoughs, Miner's Angel, Angel of the Cassair, and The Angel of Tombstone.

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

Kathy Weiser/Legends of America, © May, 2007