They arrived in the summer, and Robert supposedly started farming on 40 acres (16 ha) of land. After arriving in Virginia City in the spring of 1866, Robert took his six children on to Salt Lake City, Utah. In 1866, Charlotte died of pneumonia along the way, in Blackfoot, Montana. In 1865, Robert and his family moved by wagon train from Missouri to Virginia City, Montana.
Jane was the eldest of six children, and had two brothers and three sisters. Her father Robert Wilson Cannary had a gambling problem, and little is known about her mother Charlotte M. Her parents were listed in the 1860 census as living about 7 miles (11 km) northeast of Princeton in Ravanna. Ĭalamity Jane was born on May 1, 1852, as Martha Jane Canary (or Cannary) in Princeton, within Mercer County, Missouri.
Some of the information in the pamphlet is exaggerated or even completely inaccurate. It was intended to help attract audiences to a tour she was about to begin, in which she appeared in dime museums around the United States. Much of the information about the early years of Calamity Jane's life comes from an autobiographical booklet that she dictated in 1896, written for publicity purposes. The site was later occupied by a Premium Standard Farms hog farm. Marker east of Princeton indicating the most widely believed location of her birth.