Mollie Fly

American photographer (1847–1925)

Mary Edith "Mollie" Fly

Born|

Mary Edith McKie

c. 1847
Died| 1925
Occupation(s)| Photographer, boarding house owner
Years active| 1879–1912
Spouse(s)| Samuel D. Goodrich (before 1879)
Camillus "Buck" Sydney Fly (1879–1901)
Children| Kitty Fly (adopted)

Mary Edith Fly (c. 1847–1925) was a late 19th and early 20th century American photographer who co-founded and managed Fly's Photography Gallery in Tombstone, Arizona, with her husband, photographer C.S. "Buck" Fly. She ran the studio alone after his death in 1901. There were few women photographers in this period, and her contributions were recognized in 1989 when she was inducted into the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame.

## Personal life

[edit]

Mary Edith McKie, known as Mollie, was born in about 1847. In the late 1850s, her family moved to San Francisco.[1] Little else is known about her early life, and nothing is known about how she got her photographic training.[2]

She was married twice, first to Samuel D. Goodrich whom she divorced after two years.[1] In 1879, in San Fransicso, she married photographer Camillus Sidney "Buck" Fly. The couple later adopted a daughter, Kitty Fly.[3]

## Photographic career

[edit]

The Flys moved to the boomtown of Tombstone in Arizona Territory in 1879 and set up a photographic studio.[4] Initially it was housed in a tent, but by mid-1880 they had built a 12-room boarding house on Fremont Street – their "Fly's Photography Gallery" was in the back of the premises.[3] In 1881, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place in a lot next to the boarding house, and Ike Clanton escaped through the boarding house during the gunfight.[5]

Fly's Photography Gallery (before 1901). A modern reconstruction exists today in Tombstone. Photographic postcard by Mollie Fly, captioned "Arizona Prospectors, Tombstone", n.d. (before 1912). A rare example of her work.

Buck was often gone on photographic expeditions, and during his absence Mollie ran both the boarding house and Fly's Photography Gallery, taking studio portraits for 35 cents apiece.[3] It is not known how many photographs she took because almost all the known images from Fly's Photography Gallery are credited to her husband.[2] There are a couple of extant postcards of street scenes credited to her.[4][6]

Buck Fly became a heavy drinker, and Mollie separated from him for a time in 1887.[3] By the late 1880s, Tombstone was suffering from a declining economy, so the Flys moved to Phoenix in 1893. There they opened a new photography studio.[2] This business failed and they returned to Tombstone a year later.[2]

The Flys separated again in the late 1890s, at which time Buck opened a studio in the copper-mining town of Bisbee, Arizona.[2][3] Here the Flys suffered the first of two fires that would destroy a large portion of their collection of glass-plate negatives; in this case, the negatives lost were in storage at the Phelps Dodge Mercantile Company warehouse.[7]

While Buck was in Bisbee, Mollie Fry ran the Tombstone studio on her own, continuing to do so for another decade after Buck's death in Bisbee in 1901.[2][3][8] In 1905, she published a collection of Buck's photographs entitled Scenes in Geronimo’s Camp: The Apache Outlaw and Murderer.[4]

The Fly photography studio burning in July 1912. Photograph by Mollie Fly.

Mollie Fly retired in 1912, but three years later a fire destroyed her studio.[9] She then moved to Los Angeles, where she died in 1925. Many of the Flys' negatives had been destroyed in the two fires, but Fly donated her remaining collection of photographic negatives to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.[3]

## In popular culture

[edit]

* Fly is a character in Romain Wilhelmsen's 1999 novel Buckskin and Satin.[citation needed]
* Fly is a character in Margaret Mater's 2009 novel What Might Have Been.[citation needed]
* Mollie Fly is a character the Wild West Chronicles Season 2, Episode 9, titled "Last Shot at the OK Corral". Fly is portrayed by Hanna Balicki.[10][11]

## References

[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mollie Fly.

1. ^ a b Blanton, Heather Frey (2014). "Mollie Fly – The Woman at the OK Corral". Accessed May 3, 2016.
2. ^ a b c d e f Vaughan, Thomas. "C.S. Fly Pioneer Photojournalist". The Journal of Arizona History (Autumn, 1989 ed.) 30 (3): 303–318.
3. ^ a b c d e f g "Mary “Mollie” E. Fly (1847–1925)". Arizona Women's Hall of Fame website. Accessed May 3, 2016.
4. ^ a b c Eppinga, Jane. Tombstone. Arcadia Publishing, 2003, p. 54. [ISBN missing]
5. ^ Douglas Linder (2005). "Testimony of Ike Clanton in the Preliminary Hearing in the Earp–Holliday Case". Famous Trials: The O.K. Corral Trial. Accessed May 3, 2016.
6. ^ Eppinga, Jane. Around Tombstone: Ghost Towns and Gunfights. Arcadia Publishing, 2009, p. 46. [ISBN missing]
7. ^ Trimble, Marshall. "Why do we have so few photos of Tombstone from the Fly studio?". May 15, 2010. Accessed May 3, 2016.
8. ^ Shillingberg, William B. Tombstone, A.T.: A History of Early Mining, Milling, and Mayhem, p. 364. [ISBN missing]
9. ^ "Fly’s Photography Gallery Burns to the Ground". Keeping The Peace: Tales from the Old West, March 25, 2016. (Includes reproduction of the front page of the Tombstone Epitaph of Sunday, July 4, 1915, featuring Fly's photo of the building on fire.)
10. ^ Last Shot at the OK Corral, Wild West Chronicles, Jack Elliott, Matthew Arnett, Hanna Balicki, 2022-08-25, retrieved 2024-06-07`{{citation}}`: CS1 maint: others (link)
11. ^ INSP (2024-02-24). Wild West Chronicles | Season 2 | Episode 8 | Last Shot at the OK Corral | Jack Elliott. Retrieved 2024-06-07 - via YouTube.

* v
* t
* e

Arizona Women's Hall of Fame – by year of induction

1980s

| 1981|

* Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton
* Cordelia Adams Crawford
* Sharlot Hall
* Isabella Greenway King
* Lorna E. Lockwood
* Anna Moore Shaw

|

1982|

* Nellie T. Bush
* Eulalia Elias
* Ana Frohmiller
* Maie Bartlett Heard
* Frances Lillian Willard Munds
* Placida Garcia Smith

1983|

* Mary Bernard Aguirre
* Angela Hutchinson Hammer
* Laura E. Herron
* Edith Stratton Kitt
* Amy Cornwall Neal
* Jane H. Rider

1984|

* Rachel Emma Allen Berry
* Nellie Cashman
* Sallie Davis Hayden
* Elsie Toles
* Carmen Soto Vasquez

1985|

* Ida Redbird
* Sarah Herring Sorin
* Grace M. Sparkes
* Louisa Wade Wetherill

1986|

* Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter
* Helen Congdon D'Autremont
* Minnie K. Guenther
* Viola Jimulla
* Nampeyo
* Ruth Reinhold
* Clarissa Winsor

1987|

* Eulalia "Sister" Bourne
* Ann-Eve Mansfeld Johnson
* Abbie W. Keith
* Jessie Harper Linde
* Hattie Greene Lockett
* Clara T. Woody

1988|

* Grace Chapella
* Josephine W. Goldwater
* Hallie Bost Wright Hopkins
* Clara Otero
* Thamar Richey
* Mary V. Riley

1989|

* Guess Eleanor Birchett
* Polly Hicks Brown
* Jessie Benton Evans
* Mollie Fly
* Elizabeth S. Oldaker
* Minna Vrang Orme

1990s

| 1990|

* Clara Osborne Botzum
* Vernell Coleman
* Josephine Brawley Hughes
* Elizabeth Shannon
* Minnie McFarland Stevens
* Florence Brookhart Yount

|

1991|

* Margaret Bell Douglas
* Margaret Taylor Hance
* Polingaysi Qöyawayma (Elizabeth Q. White)
* Margaret Sanger Slee
* Ola Young

1994|

* Maria Urquides

2000s

| 2002|

* Mary Elizabeth Post
* Annie Dodge Wauneka

|

2004|

* Veora Johnson
* Louise Lincoln Kerr
* Winona E. Montgomery
* Clara Lee Tanner

2006|

* Jessie Gray Bevan
* Lucretia Breazeale Hamilton
* Ethel Maynard
* Patricia Ann McGee
* Polly Rosenbaum

2008|

* Betty Accomazzo
* Katharine Bartlett
* C. Louise Boehringer
* Sister Kathleen Clark

2010s

| 2010|

* Helene Thomas Bennett
* Alice M. Birdsall
* Pauline Bates Brown
* Jean Maddock Clark
* Anne E. Lindeman

|

2013|

* Rose E. Collom
* Jean Chaudhuri
* Helen Sekaquaptewa
* Jacque Yelland Steiner
* Dorothy Elaine Powell

2015|

* Marietta Bryant
* Daisy Moore
* Lorraine W. Frank
* Louise Foucar Marshall
* Helen K. Mason
* Lucy Sikorsky

2017|

* Rebecca Dallis
* Sister Clare Dunn
* Gladys McGarey
* Clara M. Schell
* Louise Serpa
* Christine Kajikawa Wilkinson
* Julia Zozaya

2018|

* Erma Bombeck
* Josefina Franco
* Maria Garcia
* Margaret Injasoulian
* Alison Levine
* Bridgie M. Porter
* Mary Jo West

2019|

* Shelley Cohn
* Kate Cory
* Emma Lee French
* Sharon Harper (Ethnographer)
* Guadalupe Huerta
* Cindy Hensley McCain
* Rosa Lyons McKay
* Barbara Rodriguez Mundell

2020s

| 2020|

* Betsey Bayless
* Jana Bommersbach
* Betty Fairfax
* Jean E. Fairfax
* Gracia Liliana Fernandez
* Michele Halyard
* Pauline O’Neill
* Karrin Taylor Robson
* Catherine Steele (Arizona)
* Carolyn Warner

|

2021|

* Barbara Barrett
* Armida Guerena Bittner
* Mary Black
* Margie Emmerman
* Jane Dee Hull
* Gerda Weissmann Klein

2022|

* Dosia Carlson
* Sheila Grinell
* Edna Landin
* Janet Napolitano
* Victoria Mary Stephens
* Pearl Tang

2023|

* LaVerne Williams
* Eleanor Ragsdale
* Theodora Marsh
* Terri Cruz
* Octaviana J. Trujillo
* Emma Torres
* Denise Resnik
* Diana Yazzie Devine

2025|

* Rosa Bruce
* Lillian Piñon Carrillo
* Myra Dinnerstein
* Gabby Giffords
* Socorro Hernandez-Bernasconi
* Dora Kline Perry
* Josephine Pete
* Ofelia Zepeda

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