Calamity Jane was born sometime in the years 1852 through 1856, as Martha Jane Cannary in Princeton, Missouri, within Mercer County.
Martha Jane was the eldest of six children, having two brothers and three sisters. In 1865, Robert Cannary packed his family and moved by wagon train from Missouri to Virginia City, Montana.
 Charlotte, Jane's mother, died along the way in Black Foot, Montana, in 1866 of "washtub pneumonia".
 After arriving in Virginia City in the spring of 1866, Robert took his six children on to Salt Lake City, Utah. They arrived in the summer, and Robert supposedly started farming on 40 acres (160,000 m²) of land.
They were there only a year before he died in 1867. Martha Jane then took over as head of the family, loaded up the wagon once more, and took her siblings to Fort Bridger, Wyoming Territory.
They arrived in May 1868. From there they traveled on the Union Pacific Railroad to Piedmont, Wyoming.
In Piedmont, Martha Jane took whatever jobs she could to provide for her large family. She worked as a dishwasher, a cook, a waitress, a dance-hall girl, a nurse, and an ox team driver.

Finally, in 1874, she found work as a scout at Fort Russell. During this time period, Jane also began her on-and-off employment as a prostitute at the Fort Laramie Three-Mile Hog Ranch.^[2]
Accounts from this period described Martha Jane as being "extremely attractive" and a "pretty, dark-eyed girl."
 Martha Jane received little to no formal education and was illiterate. She moved on to a rougher, mostly outdoor adventurous life on the Great Plains.

Acquiring the nickname

Martha Jane was involved in several campaigns in the long-running military conflicts with Native American Indians. Her unconfirmed claim was that:

"It was during this campaign that I was christened Calamity Jane.

It was on Goose Creek, Wyoming where the town of Sheridan is now located. Capt Egan was in command of the Post. We were ordered out to quell an uprising of the Indians, and were out for several days, had numerous skirmishes during which six of the soldiers were killed and several severely wounded.

When on returning to the Post we were ambushed about a mile and a half from our destination.

When fired upon Capt Egan was shot. I was riding in advance and on hearing the firing turned in my saddle and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle as though about to fall.

I turned my horse and galloped back with all haste to his side and got there in time to catch him as he was falling. I lifted him onto my horse in front of me and succeeded in getting him safely to the Fort.

 Capt Egan on recovering, laughingly said: 'I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains.' I have borne that name up to the present time."

However, it may be that she exaggerated or completely fabricated this story. Even back then not everyone accepted her version as true.
 A  more popular belief is that she instead acquired it as a result of her warnings to men that to offend her was to "court calamity".
One verified story though about "Calamity Jane" is that in 1875 her detachment was ordered to the Big Horn River, under General Crook.
Bearing important dispatches, she swam the Platte River and traveled 90 miles (145 km) at top speed while wet and cold to deliver them.
Afterwards, she became ill. After recuperating for a few weeks, she rode to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and later, in July 1876, she joined a wagon train headed north, which is where she first met Wild Bill Hickok, contrary to her later claims.

Deadwood and Wild Bill Hickok: 1876 – 1881

Calamity Jane accompanied the Newton-Jenney Party into the Black Hills in 1875, along with California Joe and Valentine McGillycuddy.
In 1876, Calamity Jane finally settled in the area of Deadwood, South Dakota, in the Black Hills.
There, she became friends with, and was occasionally employed by, Dora DuFran, the Black Hills' leading madam.
She also became friendly with Wild Bill Hickok and Charlie Utter, having travelled with them to Deadwood in Utter's wagon train.
Jane greatly admired Hickok (to the point of infatuation), and she was obsessed with his personality and life.
 After Hickok was killed during a poker game on August 2, 1876, Calamity Jane claimed to have been married to Hickok and that Hickok was the father of her child (Jane), who, she said, was born on September 25, 1873, and whom she later put up for adoption by Jim O'Neil and his wife.
However, no records are known to exist which prove the birth of a child, and the romantic slant to the relationship might have been fabrication.
During the period that the alleged child was born, she was working as a scout for the army.
In addition, at the time of his death, Hickok was newly married to Agnes Lake Thatcher.
However, on September 6, 1941, the U.S. Department of Public Welfare did grant old age assistance to a Jean Hickok Burkhardt McCormick (name of her third husband), who claimed to be the legal offspring of Martha Jane Cannary and James Butler Hickok, after being presented with evidence that Calamity Jane and Wild Bill had married at Benson's Landing, Montana Territory, on September 25, 1873, documentation being written in a Bible and presumably signed by two reverends and numerous witnesses.
The claim of Jean Hickok McCormick was later proved to be spurious by the Hickok family.
Jane also claimed that following Hickok's death, she went after Jack McCall, his murderer, with a meat cleaver, having left her guns at her residence in the excitement of the moment.
However, she never confronted McCall. Following McCall's eventual hanging for the offense, Jane continued living in the Deadwood area for some time, and at one point she did help save several passengers in an overland stagecoach by diverting several Plains Indians who were in pursuit of the stage.
The stagecoach driver, John Slaughter, was killed during the pursuit, and Jane took over the reins and drove the stage on to its destination at Deadwood.^[6]
Also in late 1876, Jane nursed the victims of a smallpox epidemic in the Deadwood area.

Final years: 1881 – 1903

In 1881, she bought a ranch west of Miles City, MT, along the Yellowstone River, where she kept an inn.
After marrying the Texan Clinton Burke, and moving to Boulder, she again tried her luck in this business. In 1887, she had a daughter, Jane, who was given to foster parents.
In 1893, Calamity Jane started to appear in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show as a horse rider and a trick shooter.
She also participated in the Pan-American Exposition. By this time, she was depressed and an alcoholic.

 
Jane’s addiction to liquor was evident even in her younger years. For example, on June 10, 1876, she rented a horse and buggy in Cheyenne for a mile-or-so joy ride to Fort Russell and back, but Calamity was so drunk that she passed right by her destination without noticing it and finally ended up about 90 miles away at Fort Laramie.^[8]
By the turn of the century, Madame Dora DuFran was still going strong when Jane returned to the Black Hills in 1903.
For the next few months, Jane earned her keep by cooking and doing the laundry for Dora’s brothel girls in Belle Fourche.
In July, she travelled to Terry, South Dakota. While staying in the Calloway Hotel on August 1, 1903, she developed pneumonia and died at the age of 51.
It was reported that she had been drinking heavily on board a train and became very ill. The train's conductor carried her off the train and to a cabin, where she died soon after.
In her belongings, a bundle of letters to her daughter was found, which she had never sent. Some of these letters were set to music in an art song cycle by 20th century composer Libby Larsen called Songs From Letters.
Calamity Jane was buried at Mount Moriah Cemetery (South Dakota), next to Wild Bill Hickok.
 Four of the men who planned her funeral (Albert Malter, Frank Ankeney, Jim Carson, and Anson Higby) later stated that since Hickok had “absolutely no use” for Jane while he was alive, they decided to play a posthumous joke on Wild Bill by giving Calamity an eternal resting place by his side.^[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calamity_Jane