Mary Katherine Keemle Field (pen name, Straws, Jr.; October 1, 1838 – May 19, 1896) was an American journalist, correspondent, editor, lecturer, and actress, of eccentric talent.

She began writing when still in her teens, and her letters to the Springfield Republican of Massachusetts, and other papers, over the signature of "Straws, Jr.," were well received.

[2]: 3  The family returned to St. Louis by 1852, where her father opened a theater company, before moving to Mobile, Alabama.

In Buffalo, New York, she met Mark Twain, a fellow lecturer and journalist, who spoke and wrote negatively about her.

She afterward abandoned the regular comedy for dance, song, and recitation, but achieved no striking success.

In October 1860, while visiting his mother's home in Florence, she met the celebrated British novelist Anthony Trollope.

She became one of his closest friends and was the subject of Trollope's high esteem, as noted in his "Autobiography": "There is an American woman, of whom not to speak in a work purporting to [be] a memoir of my own life would be to omit all allusion to one of the chief pleasures which has graced my later years.

Her body was in fact cremated, the ashes buried next to those of her parents and brother, at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[11][12] She ended the lecture with a description of finding, in remote North Elba, New York, the farm that had been abolitionist John Brown's, and a plea for its preservation.

[14] In addition, she was responsible for the rescue of John Brown's Fort, abandoned in Chicago after the 1893 Colombian Exposition, and got it moved back to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.