Fall 2012 Docket.p65 - Berrien County Historical Association

Aim at the high mark and you will hit it. No, not the first time, not the second time and
maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting for only practice will make
you perfect. Finally you’ll hit the bull’s-eye of success. ~ Annie Oakley
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Annie Oakley was born Phoebe Ann Mozee on August
13, 1860, the daughter of Ohio Quakers. Her father died in
1866 and although Annie’s mother remarried, her stepfather
soon died too. Poverty forced Annie’s mother to place her and
her older sister in the Darke County (Ohio) Infirmary in the
spring of 1870. She was soon “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 endured two years of near-slavery
with a family that abused her mentally and physically. She
returned to her own home in 1872 after her mother had married
for a third time.
Annie’s talent with a rifle began to develop when she
was a child. She started shooting and hunting by age eight to
help support her family, selling game animals to local residents
as well as restaurants and hotels in southern Ohio. She managed
to pay off the mortgage on her mother’s farm when she was just
fifteen years old.
In 1875, traveling show marksman Francis E. Butler
placed a $100 bet with Cincinnati hotel owner Jack Frost that
he, Butler, could beat any local fancy shooter. Frost set up a
shooting match between Butler and Annie. Butler lost the
match on the 25 th shot but gained a wife: he began courting
Annie, and they married on August 23, 1876.
Annie and Frank began performing together and joined
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in 1885. Their fellow performer
Sitting Bull gave the diminutive five-foot tall Annie the nickname
“Watanya Cicilla,” which Buffalo Bill translated as
“Little Sure Shot” in his public advertisements.
Annie toured Europe, where she performed for Queen
Victoria, King Umberto I of Italy, Marie François Sadi Carnot of
France, and other heads of state. In one exhibition, Oakley
knocked the ashes off a cigarette held by the newly crowned
German Kaiser Wilhelm II. After the outbreak of World War I,
Oakley wrote a letter to the Kaiser requesting a second shot. The
Kaiser did not reply.
Ever-growing fame made Annie Oakley America’s first
female superstar. In her most famous trick, she 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 a range
of ninety feet.
Oakley pioneered the idea of women serving in combat
operations for the United States Army when she wrote a letter to
President William McKinley just before the Spanish-American
War to offer the services of a company of fifty women sharpshooters
in the event of war. McKinley turned her down, but
Theodore Roosevelt named his volunteer cavalry the “Rough
Riders” after the “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of
Rough Riders of the World” in which Annie was a major star.
Oakley was badly injured in a railroad
accident in 1901. She recovered after five spinal
operations, but 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.
Annie also spent her time and money promoting
women’s rights and other causes. Her shooting
expertise only increased with age, and in a 1922
shooting contest the sixty-two year-old Oakley hit
one hundred clay targets in a row at a range of 16
yards.
Annie died in Greenville, Ohio, at age sixtysix
on November 3, 1926. A devastated Francis
Butler simply stopped eating and died just eighteen
days later. Representatives settling Annie’s estate
discovered that she had spent her entire fortune on
her family and her charities.
Oakley was inducted into the National
Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth,
Texas. Her remarkable life was celebrated in the
1946 Herbert and Dorothy Fields musical Annie Get
Your Gun.