Annie Oakley
Annie Oakley was an American sharpshooter and folk heroine who starred in Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
Oakley developed hunting skills as a child in order to provide for her impoverished family in western Ohio. At age 15, she won a shooting contest against an experienced marksman, Frank E. Butler, whom she married in 1876. The pair joined Buffalo Bill in 1885, performing in Europe before royalty and other heads of state. Audiences were astounded to see her shooting out a cigar from her husband's hand or splitting a playing-card edge-on at 30 paces. She earned more than anyone else in the troupe except Buffalo Bill himself.
After a bad rail accident in 1901, she engaged in a less taxing routine, touring in a play about her career. She also instructed women in marksmanship, believing strongly in women's self-defense. Her stage acts were filmed for one of Thomas Edison's earliest Kinetoscopes in 1894. Since her death in 1926, her story has been adapted for stage musicals and films, including Annie Get Your Gun.
Early life
Annie Oakley was born Phoebe Ann "Annie" Mosey on August 13, 1860, in a log cabin less than northwest of Woodland, now Willowdell, in Darke County, Ohio, a rural county along the state line with Indiana. Her birthplace is about east of North Star. There is a stone-mounted plaque in the vicinity of the site, which was placed by the Annie Oakley Committee in 1981, 121 years after her birth.Annie's parents were Quakers of English descent from Hollidaysburg, Blair County, Pennsylvania: Susan, born 1830, and Jacob Mosey, born 1799, married in 1848. They moved to a rented farm in Patterson Township, Darke County, Ohio, sometime around 1855.
Born in 1860, Annie was the sixth of Jacob and Susan's nine children, and the fifth of the seven surviving ones. Her siblings were Mary Jane, Lydia, Elizabeth, Sarah Ellen, Catherine, John, Hulda and a stillborn infant brother in 1865. Annie's father, who was already sixty-one years old at the time of her birth, became ill from hypothermia during a blizzard in late 1865. He died shortly after from pneumonia in the following year at the age of 66. Her mother later married Daniel Brumbaugh, had another daughter, Emily, and was widowed once again.
Because of poverty following her father's death, Annie did not regularly attend school as a child, although she did attend later in childhood and adulthood. On March 15, 1870, at age nine, she was admitted to the Darke County Infirmary along with her sister Sarah Ellen. According to her autobiography, she was put in the care of the infirmary's superintendent, Samuel Crawford Edington, and his wife Nancy, who taught her to sew and decorate. Beginning in the spring of 1870, she was "bound out" to a local family to help care for their infant son, on the false promise of fifty cents per week and an education. The couple had originally wanted someone who could pump water and cook and who was bigger. She spent about two years in near slavery to them, enduring mental and physical abuse. On one occasion, the wife put Annie outside in freezing temperatures without shoes as a punishment for having fallen asleep over some darning. Annie referred to them as "the wolves". Even in her autobiography, she never revealed the couple's real names.
According to biographer Glenda Riley, "the wolves" could have been the Studabaker family, but the 1870 U.S. census suggests that they were the Abram Boose family of neighboring Preble County. Around the spring of 1872, Annie ran away from "the wolves". According to biographer Shirl Kasper, it was only at this point that Annie met and lived with the Edingtons, returning to her mother's home around the age of fifteen.
Annie began trapping before age seven, and shooting and hunting by age eight, in order to support her siblings and her widowed mother. She sold hunted game to locals in Greenville, such as shopkeepers Charles and G. Anthony Katzenberger, who shipped it to hotels in Cincinnati and other cities. She also sold game to restaurants and hotels in northern Ohio. Her skill paid off the mortgage on her mother's farm when Annie was fifteen.
Surname
There are a number of variations given for Oakley's family name, Mosey. Many biographers and other references give the name as 'Moses'. Although the 1860 U.S. census shows the family name as 'Mauzy', this is considered an error introduced by the census taker. Oakley's name appears as 'Ann Mosey' in the 1870 census and 'Mosey' is engraved on her father's headstone and appears in his military record; 'Mosey' is the official spelling by the Annie Oakley Foundation, maintained by her living relatives. The spelling 'Mosie' has also appeared.According to Kasper, Oakley insisted that her family name be spelled 'Mozee', leading to arguments with her brother John. Kasper speculates that Oakley may have considered 'Mozee' to be a more phonetic spelling. There is also popular speculation that young Oakley had been teased about her name by other children.
Prior to their double wedding in March 1884, Oakley's brother John and one of her sisters, Hulda, changed their surnames to 'Moses'.
Marriage and career
Annie became well known throughout the region. On Thanksgiving Day 1875, the Baughman & Butler shooting act was being performed in Cincinnati. Traveling show marksman and former dog trainer Frank E. Butler, an Irish immigrant, placed a $100 bet with Cincinnati hotel owner Jack Frost that Butler could beat any local fancy shooter. The hotelier arranged a shooting match between Butler and the fifteen-year-old Annie, saying, "The last opponent Butler expected was a 15-year-old girl named Annie." After missing on his 25th shot, Butler lost the match and the bet. Another account says that Butler hit on his last shot, but the bird fell dead about beyond the boundary line. Butler began courting Annie, and they married. They had no children.According to a modern-day account in The Cincinnati Enquirer, it is possible that the shooting match took place in 1881, not 1875. It appears the time of the event was never recorded. Biographer Shirl Kasper states that the shooting match took place in the spring of 1881 near Greenville, possibly in North Star, as mentioned by Butler during interviews in 1903 and 1924. Other sources seem to coincide with the North Fairmount location near Cincinnati if the event occurred in 1881.
The Bevis House hotel was still being operated by Martin Bevis and W. H. Ridenour in 1875. It opened around 1860, after the building had been previously used as a pork packaging facility. Jack Frost did not obtain management of the hotel until 1879. The Baughman & Butler shooting act first appeared on the pages of The Cincinnati Enquirer in 1880. The pair signed with Sells Brothers Circus in 1881, and made an appearance at the Coliseum Opera House later that year.
Oakley and Butler were married a year afterward. A certificate on file with the Archives of Ontario, Registration Number 49594, reports that Butler and Oakley were wed on June 20, 1882, in Windsor, Ontario. Many sources say the marriage took place on August 23, 1876, in Cincinnati, but no recorded certificate confirms that date. A possible reason for the contradictory dates is that Butler's divorce from his first wife, Henrietta Saunders, was not yet final in 1876. An 1880 U.S. census record shows Saunders as married. Sources mentioning Butler's first wife as Elizabeth are inaccurate; Elizabeth was his granddaughter, her father being Edward F. Butler. Throughout Oakley's show-business career, the public was often led to believe that she was five or six years younger than she was; The later marriage date would have better supported her fictional age.
Increase in popularity and touring
Annie and Frank Butler lived in Cincinnati for a time. Oakley, the stage name she adopted when she and Frank began performing together, is believed to have been taken from the city's neighborhood of Oakley, where they resided. Some people believe she took the name because that was the name of the man who had paid her train fare when she was a child.They joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1885. At five feet tall, Oakley was given the nickname of "Watanya Cicilla" by fellow performer Sitting Bull, rendered "Little Sure Shot" in the public advertisements.
During her first engagement with the Buffalo Bill show, Oakley experienced a tense professional rivalry with rifle sharpshooter Lillian Smith. Smith was eleven years younger than Oakley, age fifteen at the time she joined the show in 1886, which may have been a primary reason for Oakley to alter her age as six years younger in later years due to Smith's press coverage becoming as favorable as hers. Oakley temporarily left the Buffalo Bill show but returned two years later, after Smith departed, in time for the Paris Exposition of 1889. This three-year tour cemented Oakley as America's first female star. She earned more than any other performer in the show, except Buffalo Bill himself. She also performed in many shows on the side for extra income. During her lifetime, the theatre business began referring to complimentary tickets as "Annie Oakleys". Such tickets traditionally had holes punched into them, reminiscent of the playing cards Oakley shot through during her sharpshooting act.
In Europe, she performed for Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, King Umberto I of Italy, President Marie François Sadi Carnot of France, and other crowned heads of state. Oakley supposedly shot the ashes off a cigarette held by the newly crowned German Kaiser Wilhelm II at his request.
From 1892 to 1904, Oakley and Butler made their home in Nutley, New Jersey.
Oakley promoted the service of women in combat operations for the United States armed forces. She wrote a letter to President William McKinley on April 5, 1898, "offering the government the services of a company of 50 'lady sharpshooters' who would provide their own arms and ammunition should the U.S. go to war with Spain."
The Spanish–American War did occur, but Oakley's offer was not accepted. Theodore Roosevelt, did, however, name his volunteer cavalry the "Rough Riders" after the "Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World," of which Oakley was a major star.
In 1901, Oakley was badly injured in a train accident, but recovered after temporary paralysis and five spinal operations. She left the Buffalo Bill show, and in 1902 began a less taxing acting career in a stage play written especially for her, The Western Girl. Oakley played the role of Nancy Berry, who used a pistol, a rifle, and rope to outsmart a group of outlaws.
Throughout her career, it is believed that Oakley taught more than 15,000 women how to use a gun. Oakley believed strongly that it was crucial for women to learn how to use a gun, as not only a form of physical and mental exercise, but also to defend themselves. She said: "I would like to see every woman know how to handle guns as naturally as they know how to handle babies."