Annie Oakley (August 13, 1860 – November 3, 1926), born Phoebe Ann Mosey,^[1][2][3] was an American sharpshooter and exhibition shooter. Oakley's amazing talent^[4] and timely rise to fame^[5] led to a starring role in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, which propelled her to become the first American female superstar.

Oakley's most famous trick is perhaps being able to repeatedly split a playing card, edge-on, and put several more holes in it before it could touch the ground, while using a .22 caliber rifle, at 90 feet.^[6]

Annie Oakley aka Phoebe Ann Mosey was born in "a cabin less than two miles northwest of Woodland, now Willowdell, in Partentown Darke County", a rural western border county of Ohio.^[7] The village of North Star has a road sign stating it is near her place of birth.^[8] Her birthplace log cabin site is about five miles eastward of North Star.^[9] There is a stone-mounted plaque in the vicinity of the cabin site, which was placed by the Annie Oakley Committee in 1981, 121 years after her birth.^[10] The committee misspelled her birth surname on the cast bronze plaque, incorrectly ending in an "s" instead of "y".^[3]

Annie's parents were Quakers from Hollidaysburg, Blair County, Pennsylvania: Susan Wise, age 18,^[11] and Jacob Mosey (1860 U.S. Census shows his name as Mauzy, born 1799), age 49,^[1] married in 1848.^[12] A fire burned down their tavern in Hollidaysburg, so they moved to a rented farm (later purchased with a mortgage) in Patterson Township, Darke County. The move occurred sometime between sister 1855, and sister Sarah Ellen's Darke County birth in 1857.^{[citation needed]}

Born in 1860, Annie was the sixth of Jacob and Susan's six children.^[13] Her father, who had fought in the War of 1812, died in 1866 at age 66, frompneumonia and overexposure in freezing weather. Her mother married Daniel Brumbaugh,^[11] had a ninth child, Emily,^[14] and was widowed a second time.

On March 15, 1870, at age nine, Annie was admitted to Darke County Infirmary, along with elder 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. Infirmary records indicate that William Thompson was Infirmary superintendent at the time, however Samuel Edington would assume that position in the beginning of 1871. Discrepancies between Annie's account and record supported facts are likely owed to fuzzy recollections. 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 a week and an education. She spent about two years in near-slavery to them where she endured mental and physical abuse (Annie referred to them as "the wolves").^[15] When, in the spring of 1872, she reunited with her family, her mother had married a third time, to Joseph Shaw.^[11]

Because of poverty following the death of her father, Annie did not regularly attend school. Later she received some additional education. She rendered her surname as ending in "ee", while it appears as "Mosey" on her father's gravestone^[16] and in his military record; it is the official spelling by the Annie Oakley Foundation maintained by her living relatives.^[3][17] Variations in the accepted surname spelling ("Mosey") have included "Moses", "Mosie", and "Mauzy". There is no known record to substantiate Annie's vehement assertion that the correct spelling is "Mozee".

Annie began trapping at a young age, and shooting and hunting by age eight to support her siblings and her widowed mother. She sold the hunted game for money to locals in Greenville, as well as restaurants and hotels in southern Ohio. Her skill eventually paid off the mortgage on her mother's farm when Annie was 15.^[18]

[edit]Debut and marriage

Annie Oakley performing at an amateur circus in Nutley, New Jersey, in 1894, to raise funds for the Red Cross

Oakley soon became well known throughout the region. During the spring of 1881, the Baughman and Butler shooting act was being performed in Cincinnati.

Traveling show marksman and former dog trainer Francis E. Butler (1850–1926), an Irish immigrant,^[19] placed a $100 bet per side (roughly equivalent to modern US$2,000) with Cincinnati hotel owner Jack Frost, that he, Butler, could beat any local fancy shooter.

The hotelier arranged a shooting match between Butler and the 21-year-old Oakley, to be held in ten days in a small town near Greenville, Ohio. Butler later said it was "18 miles from the nearest [train] station"^[20] (about the distance from Greenville to North Star).

After missing on his 25th shot, Butler lost the match and the bet. He began courting Oakley, and they married on June 20, 1882.^[20]

[edit]Career and touring

Oakley circa 1899

Annie Oakley and Frank Butler lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, for a time, and she is believed to have taken her stage name from the city's neighborhood of Oakley, where they resided.

They joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in 1885. At 5 feet (1.5 m) 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 Buffalo Bill's show, Oakley experienced a tense professional rivalry with rifle sharpshooter Lillian Smith. Being eleven years younger, Smith promoted herself as younger and therefore more billable than Oakley. Oakley temporarily left the Buffalo Bill's show, but returned after Smith departed.

In Europe, she performed for Queen Victoria of Great Britain, King Umberto I of Italy, Marie François Sadi Carnot (the President of France) and other crowned heads of state. Oakley had such good aim that, at his request, she knocked the ashes off a cigarette held by the newly crowned German Kaiser Wilhelm II.^[22]

The Annie Oakley Foundation suggests that she was not the source of a widely-repeated quip related to the event, "Some uncharitable people later ventured that if Annie would have shot Wilhelm and not his cigarette, she could have prevented World War I."^[22] After the outbreak of World War I, however, Oakley did send a letter to the Kaiser, requesting a second shot.^[23] The Kaiser did not respond.^[23]

Wild West show poster

Oakley promoted the service of women in combat operations for the United States armed forces. She wrote a letter to PresidentWilliam 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."^[24]

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" where Oakley was a major star.

The same year that McKinley was fatally shot by an assassin, 1901, Oakley was also badly injured in a train wreck, but she fully recovered after temporary paralysis and five spinal operations.

She left the Buffalo Bill show and in 1902 began a quieter acting career in a stage play written especially for her, The Western Girl. Oakley played the role of Nancy Berry and used a pistol, rifle and rope to outsmart a group of outlaws ^[25]

Following her injury and change of career, it only added to her legend that her shooting expertise continued to increase into her 60s.

Throughout her career, it is believed that Oakley taught upwards of 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.^[26]

[edit]Libel cases

In 1904, sensational cocaine prohibition stories were selling well. The newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst published a false story that Oakley had been arrested for stealing to support a cocaine habit. The woman actually arrested was a burlesque performer who told Chicago police that her name was "Annie Oakley". The original Annie Oakley spent much of the next six years winning 54 of 55 libel lawsuits against newspapers. She collected less in judgments than were her legal expenses, but to her, a restored reputation justified the loss of time and money.^[27]

Most of the newspapers that printed the story had relied on the Hearst article, and upon learning of the libelous error they immediately retracted the false story with apologies. Hearst, however, tried to avoid paying the anticipated court judgments of $20,000 ($300,000, adjusted for inflation in 2008 dollars) by sending an investigator to Darke County with the intent of collecting reputation-smearing gossip from Oakley's past. The investigator found nothing.^{[citation needed]}

[edit]Later years and death

Oakley in 1922

Oakley continued to set records into her 60s, and she also engaged in extensive, albeit quiet, philanthropy for women's rights and other causes, including the support of specific young women that she knew. She embarked on a comeback and intended to star in a feature-length silent movie. In a 1922 shooting contest in Pinehurst, North Carolina, sixty-two-year-old Oakley hit 100 clay targets in a row from 16 yards (15 m).^[28]

In late 1922, Oakley and Butler suffered a debilitating automobile accident that forced her to wear a steel brace on her right leg. Yet after a year and a half of recovery, she again performed and set records in 1924.^[29]

Her health declined in 1925 and she died of pernicious anemia in Greenville, Ohio at the age of sixty-six in 1926.^[30][31] She was buried in Brock Cemetery in Greenville, Ohio.^[32] Butler was so crushed by her death that he stopped eating.^{[citation needed]} He died just 18 days later.

After her death, her incomplete autobiography was given to Fred Stone, the stage comedian,^[33] and it was discovered that her entire fortune had been spent on her family and her charities.^{[citation needed]}

She was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas.

[edit]The Little Sure Shot of the Wild West

Annie Oakley's 1894 "exhibition of rifle shooting at glass balls, etc", in an Edison Kinetoscope movie

When Buffalo Bill performed, he decided to hire someone else instead of Annie. In 1894, Oakley and Butler performed in Edison's Kinetoscope film, The "Little Sure Shot" of the "Wild West," an exhibition of rifle shooting at glass balls, etc.^[34] Filmed November 1, 1894, in Edison's Black Maria studio by William Heise (0:21 at 30 frame/s; 39 ft.),^[35] it was about the 11th film made after commercial showings began on April 14, 1894.^[36]

Oakley's early movie star opportunity followed from Buffalo Bill and Thomas Edison's friendship, which developed after Edison personally built for the Wild West Show, what in the 1890s was the world's largest electrical power plant.^[29] Buffalo Bill and fifteen of his show Indians appeared in two Kinetoscopes filmed September 24, 1894.^[37][38]

[edit]Eponym

During her lifetime, the theatre business began referring to complimentary tickets as "Annie Oakleys." Such tickets traditionally have holes punched into them (to prevent them from being resold), reminiscent of the playing cards Oakley shot through during her sharpshooting act.

Oakley's life has been immortalized in the theater, on television, and in movies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Oakley