Mary E. Fielder was born about 1867 in Georgia. She was the youngest child of Herbert Fielder
and Mary Blance. Her father, a lawyer,
was a prolific writer involved in southern politics.
Since Mary’s sister Kallura was sent to Ward’s Seminary for
Young Ladies (a finishing school) in Tennessee, it seems likely that Mary too
attended Ward’s where she became a concert-level pianist and vocalist.
Around 1884, the Fielders
relocated to Deming, New Mexico, where Mr. Fielder opened a new law
office. Here, Mary met and married James
William Fayman, a clerk for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
The young couple moved to Los Angeles, California in 1887,
where they became involved with the social life of the Los Angeles area and
were often mentioned in the newspapers.
Mary taught music and performed with her students as well as solo.
Sometime around 1894, the Faymans moved to Truckee,
California. There, Mary became involved
in a romantic relationship with a well-known male resident of that city. Their
marriage at an end, James returned to Los Angeles and Mary went to live with
her brother in Silver City, New Mexico.
Mary’s movements during the next few years are difficult to
trace, but somewhere along the way she developed a fondness for absinthe, a
liquor often associated with artists and a bohemian lifestyle. She is said to have gone to Tucson, Arizona,
to sing in saloons and then returned to Los Angeles, where she rented lodgings
under the name of Josie Black. She
arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, at the end of 1897 where she found employment
playing piano and singing at the Anheuser Saloon under the name of Pauline Fayman.
Mary had been drinking heavily on the evening of February
27, 1898. Around 1 AM, she returned to
her room at the St. Lawrence Hotel where she took a large dose of a white
powder. A doctor was summoned but she
refused medical help when he arrived, claiming it was only baking soda. She was discovered dead the following
afternoon, and a coroner’s inquest determined that she had in fact ingested
morphine.
The investigation into her death also turned up a photograph
that had been torn into pieces. Written
on the back of one scrap was “Don’t bury me in a pauper’s grave. Don’t telegraph my brother at Silver
City.”
Mary’s friends and brother carried out her last wish. She was buried in Loosley Cemetery in
Phoenix, Arizona, under the name of Pauline Fayman, although her surname on the
grave marker is spelled incorrectly as Fanman.
-By Patty Gault
