Oakley, Annie
[Phoebe Anne Moses]
Shooting
b. Aug. 13, 1860, Greenville, OH
d. Nov. 3, 1926
Annie Moses learned to shoot game as a young girl to help feed her family. Aware of her shooting prowess, her neighbors raised money to send her to Cincinnati in 1875 for a match against Frank Butler, a marksman who had a traveling show.
She won the match and Butler added her to his troupe, giving her the stage name Annie Oakley. They were married on Aug. 23, 1876, ten days after her 16th birthday. In 1884, Buffalo Bill Cody signed them to travel with his Wild West Show. Oakley quickly became the show's biggest star.
Although known for her trick shots, Oakley was also a great trapshooter. Between 1867 and 1922, when she was sixty-two years old, she broke 100 targets in a row many times.
Among her feats were hitting a dime thrown into the air, splitting a playing card held on edge from 30 paces, and shooting a cigarette from Butler's lips. Oakley's most spectacular trick was to lie in one her back and have someone throw six glass balls into the air simultaneously. Using three double-barreled shotguns, she would break all six before they hit the ground.
In 1884, Oakley met Chief Sitting Bull during a trip to St. Paul, Minnesota. He adopted her to replace a daughter who had died and named her "Little Sure Shot," which Buffalo Bill incorporated into advertising for his show.
Oakley toured the United States and Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show until 1901, when she suffered a serious back injury in a train crash. She and Butler then began giving exhibitions for the Union Metallic Cartridge Company.
She retired temporarily in 1913 but began to offer occasional exhibitions once more in 1917, often to raise money for the Red Cross, and in 1922 she went on the road giving full-scale performances in several cities. Late that year, she and Butler were both seriously injured in an auto accident. She made one more brief return as a performer in 1924, but poor health forced her back into retirement. She and Butler died within three weeks of one another in 1926.
The Irving Berlin musical, "Annie Get Your Gun," was based on her life and free passes are still often called "Annie Oakleys" because of the holes that are punched in them so that they aren't counted as paid admissions.