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The Trials of Annie Oakley

On August 8, 1903, a drifter named Charles Curtis made his way to the Harrison Street Police Station in Chicago and filed a complaint to Justice of the Peace John R. Caverly about a woman named Little Cody. Curtis had befriended the woman he supposed was down on her luck and provided her a place to stay for a few days. During her visit with Charles, she stole a pair of pants and made herself a nuisance. The complaint charged her with having “made an improper noise, riot, and disturbance.” A warrant for the woman’s arrest was issued, and “Little Cody” was arrested and escorted to jail. The fee she was to pay was $100. She didn’t have the money to give the court and was to be held until she produced the funds.

The prisoner did not give the clerks or the jail matrons a difficult time. She was chatty during the intake process, but polite. Her appearance was slovenly, clothes were torn and unwashed, and she was obviously under the influence of drugs. She told officials at the facility about her work as a crack rifle shot and of the days, she spent with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show. The curious matron couldn’t help but pursue the matter further. “You are the noted Annie Oakley, I guess.” The woman proudly announced that she was indeed the famed sure shot.

Charles Curtis came to visit the woman once she was behind bars and seeing her distressed state decided not to press charges.

When arraigned before the justice on Monday morning August 10, the police officer who had booked her into jail stated she was the famous Annie Oakley who had exhibited with Buffalo Bill Cody. The officer informed the court that if she were allowed to go free, she would only spread disease and implored the judge to send her to a women’s asylum where she could be taken care of. The judge agreed and instructed the court to send the woman to Bridewell Prison Farm. Her fine was reduced to $25.

After her day in court, she was taken downstairs to the lock up again. Several people were waiting for her to arrive so they could talk with her. One of those individuals was George W. Pratt, a reporter for the Chicago American. Pratt had visited Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show many times and was acquainted with several acts associated with the program. He wanted to get the woman’s full story and spent hours with her asking questions about what brought her to such a lowly state. Her answers contained specific information about who performed in Cody’s shows with her, when, and the exhilarating experience she had at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Pratt and other reporters were convinced this woman was the real Annie Oakley. Pratt wrote a story about his first-hand experience with the accused. As many reporters did at that time, he elaborated and sensationalized the account.

To learn more about the famous sure shot read

The Trials of Annie Oakley

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Say the name Annie Oakley and the image of a young woman who could shoot targets out of the sky without a miss and rode across the frontier with Wild West showman Buffalo Bill Cody comes to mind. Annie Oakley was a champion rifle shot and did perform alongside well-known riders, ropers, and Indian chiefs in Colonel Cody’s vaudevillian tour, but there was more to Annie Oakley’s fame than her skill with a gun. The diminutive weapons wonder was a strong proponent of the right to bear arms, a noted philanthropist, and warrior against libel who fought the most powerful man in publishing and won.

The native Ohioan astonished the world with her almost unbelievable feats of rifle marksmanship. She could pepper a playing card sailing through the air, puncture dimes tossed into the sky, and break flying balls with her rifle held high above her head. She once shot steadily for nine hours, using three sixteen-gauge hammer shotguns which she loaded herself, breaking 4,772 out of 5,000 balls.

Annie Oakley fell in love with and married the first man she defeated in a rifle match. Frank E. Butler was one of the most noted marksmen in the West and he and Annie were married for more than fifty years. The couple never had any children of their own. The reasons they were childless are varied and speculative at best. What is not without question is how Annie helped fund the care and education of orphaned children from coast to coast.

Annie Oakley was a combination of dainty, feminine charm, and lead bullets, adorned in fringed handmade fineries and topped with a halo of powder blue smoke. She had a reputation for being humble, true, and law abiding and was careful with her character at all times. When powerful, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst challenged her honor and questioned her respectability in his publication in 1903, Annie filed a lawsuit against him that’s still discussed at universities today.

Annie’s experience with Hearst wasn’t the only trial she encountered in her celebrated life. A couple of motor vehicle accidents left her in constant pain, subjected her to numerous back surgeries, and resulted in Annie having to wear a leg brace. There were other struggles as well, some just as stifling as a leg brace.

Although Annie’s position on what women should be allowed to do was progressive for the time (she believed in equal pay and in women’s right to carry a gun) she was not for women’s suffrage. Her chief concern was that not enough “good” women would vote. Annie wasn’t political in that sense. She tried for years to convince the government to allow her to recruit a team of women sharpshooters to fight for the country but was never successful. Public servants dismissed the firearms expert’s idea outright, but Annie never fully abandoned the notion.

The incomparable Annie Oakley suffered through numerous heartaches in her lifetime, the death of her father in 1866, her mother in 1908, her beloved dog, Dave in 1923, and her dear friend, Buffalo Bill Cody in 1917. She was also forced to deal with reports of her own death in 1890. “I am, indeed, very grateful for your many kind words in my obituary,” she wrote the editor at a Cincinnati, Ohio, magazine. “How such a report got started I do not know. I am thankful to say I’m in the best of health.”

Annie and Frank battled imposters trying to use Oakley’s famous name to gain work at theaters and rodeos and endeavored to tolerate brash rivals like Lillian Smith, who was hired by Buffalo Bill Cody to appear in the Wild West show. Lillian was younger than Annie and she was braggadocios and flirtatious with the male cast members of the Wild West show. Her unladylike behavior contributed to Annie’s eventual departure from the program, a way of life that had been a constant for her for more than sixteen years.

Only those close to Annie were aware of the difficulties she experienced. She managed every trial that came her way with such dignity and grace it was easy for the public to believe she never had a worry, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

The Trials of Annie Oakley describe the hardships the peerless lady wing shot overcame, from her early life using her marksmanship as a means of providing food for her widowed mother, brother, and sisters, to her final days dealing with all the symptoms associated with pernicious anemia. It is the story of a young woman who survived scandal and misfortune to become a true American hero.

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The Lady and the Mountain Man: 

Isabella Bird, Mountain Man Jim Nugent, and their Unlikely Friendship

Isabella considered the criticism Evans had about Jim. She believed some of the animosity was born out of the fact that he was a popular character and articles about him frequently appeared in Colorado newspapers. He was a man to be envied, and Evans and others hoping to drive Jim out of the park were consumed with jealousy. “Ruffian as he looks,” Isabella elaborated on Jim in her memoirs, “the first word he speaks – to a lady, at least – places him on a level with educated gentlemen, and his conversation is brilliant, and full of the light and fitfulness of genius.”

Isabella always keenly felt Jim’s absences. On one hand she admired him greatly, and on the other she grieved the life she felt he wasted because of his unruly past.  “What good could the future have in store for one who has for so long chosen evil,” she asked herself in her memoirs. After each encounter, she was consumed with the notion if Jim surrendered all to the Lord his path would be set straight again. Only then could there be hope for “a most painful spectacle.”  Only then could there be hope the two might find happiness together. Thoughts of Jim and his restoration crowded her mind to the exclusion of all else. She couldn’t write. Distractions were necessary. Fortunately, the day after her exhilarating ride with Jim and the Deweys, Griff Evans provided one. Once again, he needed another hand to help with a cattle drive. Isabella gladly agreed.

The bronco Isabella was given to ride was quick and resilient. The pair traveled over rocks and inclines, driving the herds out of canyons and tree lines. While riding fast and pushing the cows forward, Isabella reflected on her days riding in Hawaii. That challenge had provided her with the experience needed to round up Texas steers.

To learn more about Isabella Bird’s time with Jim Nugent read

The Lady and the Mountain Man

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The Lady and the Mountain Man: 

Isabella Bird, Mountain Man Jim Nugent, and their Unlikely Friendship

To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves. 

Isabella Bird loved an outlaw and only shared her feelings with her sister. 

Mountain Man Jim loved a lady and told everyone who would listen. 

Read the true story of the unlikely friendship of Isabella Bird and Mountain Man Jim Nugent in 

The Lady and the Mountain Man.  

Synopsis: Isabella Bird was a proper Victorian lady, a minster’s daughter, a writer who traveled the globe. She was expected to marry a man of means and position instead she was drawn to a gruff mountain man, a desperado named Jim Nugent.

Critique: The Lady and the Mountain Man: Isabella Bird, Rocky Mountain Jim, and their Unlikely Friendship is the extensively researched, true-life account of how two people with tremendously different backgrounds and temperaments shared a mutual love of a wild land. Isabella Bird was a well-to-do woman, an author, and a traveler with dreams, expected to marry a man of means and position. Yet she became infatuated with the gruff desperado Jim Nugent (“Rocky Mountain Jim”) in Estes Park, Colorado in 1873. Their unlikely friendship bloomed over the course of a climb to the top of Longs Peak. Extensive notes, a bibliography, and an index round out his in-depth examination of a journey and a relationship that would transform both Isabella and Jim of them for the rest of their lives – although Isabella was ultimately destined to have a much longer life than Jim. A thoroughly captivating slice of history, The Lady and the Mountain Man is highly recommended especially for public library Western History collections.