Annie Oakley » HistoryNet - 0 views
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She was the first white woman hired by a Wild West outfit to fill a traditionally male role.
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She was, hands down, the finest woman sharpshooting entertainer of all time. And, at one time, she may have been the most famous woman in the American West or the American East. She was, of course, Annie Oakley — her name nearly as well recognized to this day as that of the bigger-than-life figure who hired her, Buffalo Bill.
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Annie, born Phoebe Ann Moses in Ohio's Darke County on August 13, 1860, got her gun at an early age but didn't shoot her way to everlasting fame until after William 'Buffalo Bill' Cody put her on the payroll in 1885. In the process, the little woman (5 feet tall, about 110 pounds) gave Cody's Wild West a shot in the arm.
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She believed that women needed to learn to be proficient with firearms to defend themselves and that they could even help fight for their country.
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If nothing else, Annie Oakley helped expand the career options of American women.
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Annie rose to stardom from humble roots. In the mid-1860s her father, Jacob, died, and her mother, Susan, had a devil of a time trying to make ends meet with seven children age 15 or younger on her hands.
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Her life took a turn for the better when she met Irishman Frank ('Jimmie') Butler of the Butler and Baughman shooting act.
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A courtship ensued — between Annie and Frank, that is — and the couple was married within the year…or so the legend has it.
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They told everyone that they were married about a year after they met, and their only known marriage certificate says they tied the knot on June 20, 1882, in Windsor, Canada, when Annie was 21.
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She filled in admirably and became an instant hit. She chose 'Oakley' as her stage name for some unknown reason and began to tour with Frank.
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they met Buffalo Bill Cody, but he didn't hire her until after she and her manager-husband had come to Louisville, Ky., early in 1885 for a three-day tryout. After an agreement was struck, Buffalo Bill brought her to the mess tent to introduce her to the members of his Wild West, which had been inaugurated in 1883.
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Annie Oakley and Frank Butler toured with the Wild West for some 16 seasons, and the only contract they had with Cody was verbal.
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The Oakley act was spectacular
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Dexter Fellows, a sometimes press agent for the Wild West, wrote in his autobiographical book This Way to the Big Show that Annie 'was a consummate actress, with a personality that made itself felt as soon as she entered the arena.
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Frank Butler also got into the act, releasing clay pigeons for his wife. She would jump over her gun table and shoot the clay bird before it hit the ground.
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Charlatan shooters preferred to shoot ashes from cigars (with the help of a wire embedded in the cigar and twisted by the assistant's tongue at the proper moment), so Annie insisted on shooting only whole cigarettes. Her act often included hitting targets while riding a bicycle with no hands.
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At Annie's command, he dropped a tin plate. Annie turned, fired and hit it square, all within about half a second.
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Annie Oakley had a theatrical flair and the quickness and agility of an athlete. But none of it would have meant too much had she not been such a top hand with all kinds of firearms
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The famous Sioux (Lakota) spiritual leader and medicine man Sitting Bull toured with the Wild West during the 1885 season. Annie had actually met him the previous year in a St. Paul, Minn., theater, when Sitting Bull, then a resident of the Standing Rock
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They were happily reunited the next year as employees of Cody's Wild West. Whenever Sitting Bull got peevish that season, Cody would send for Little Sure Shot, who would talk to the Lakota leader for a while and then do her jig before leaving his quarters.
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Annie Oakley had not been born in the West, and she had not lived there. But for many years she had certainly looked likea cowgirl, and she had ridden a horse and shot better than most any Westerner, of either sex, while performing in Wild West shows. To call her, then, a 'Western legend' does not miss the mark…even if she was too good, and too good a shot, to shoot anyone.
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After giving her last performance with Young Buffalo Wild West on October 4, 1913, Annie and Frank retired to a new home in Cambridge, Md., and also spent a lot of their time at resorts in Pinehurst, N.C., and Leesburg, Fla. Hunting and shooting remained a big part of their lives.
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Biographer Shirl Kasper, however, argues that Annie was not badly hurt in the wreck (the Charlotte Observer reported that nobody from the Wild West was injured) and that while Annie's hair did turn white rather fast, it wasn't because of the train wreck. Two newspaper articles in Annie's scrapbooks at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center say that her hair turned white
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Buffalo Bill's Wild West played in more than 130 towns in both 1895 and 1896.
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When reporters reminded Li'l Missie that she had shot a cigarette out of the mouth of the kaiser (Wilhelm II) during the 1890-91 tour, she remarked that she wished that she had missed that particular shot.
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At first, the French apparently thought Buffalo Bill's whole spectacle, including the shooting, was a fake, but when they saw Annie Oakley perform, they became convinced that she was the real thing.
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That same year, Lillian Smith left the show, and Annie had no competition from any other female sharpshooter in France.
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While Annie was touring with Pastor, Frank Butler also arranged frequent shooting matches and exhibitions for his wife. In one match for $50 she broke all 50 clay birds, and in another, featuring 50 live pigeons, she defeated Miles Johnson, champion of New Jersey.
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But there was room for both of them, and the Wild West continued to be a big hit when it moved into Madison Square Garden that winter.
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In 1887, the two women sharpshooters and the rest of Buffalo Bill's Wild West sailed to London as part of the U.S. delegation to Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee.
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On May 11, it was Queen Victoria's turn to have a command performance. It was held at the exhibition grounds after her courtiers convinced her that they couldn't fit Cody's outfit into Windsor Castle.
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Oakley's rising fame may have gone to her head, or to
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the head of her husband, and a rift developed between them and Cody.
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