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Annie Oakley burst into the Wild West Show’s arena in Louisville, Kentucky, atop a brown and white pony.  She waved and blew kisses at the excited audience as she spurred her ride around a straw barrier at a high lope.  The cowboy just ahead of her paced her to a slower ride and began tossing balls into the air.  She raised her rifle to her shoulders.  The balls burst as fast as he could throw them.

Putting her gun away for the moment, she quickly dismounted and raced over to a table at the far end of the grounds.  Another cowboy juggling glass balls was waiting for her.  Annie jumped over the gun table, scooped up a weapon just as the cowboy tossed up four balls.  Two balls disappeared.  She picked up another gun.  The other two balls blew apart.  The timid women in the audience who screamed with fright at the initial sound of the noisy firearms broke into round and round of applause.

Annie bowed to the delighted crowd and searched the table for the prop she used in her most famous stunt, The Mirror Trick.  Using a knife blade for a mirror, Annie then pointed her gun over her shoulder.  Frank Butler, Annie’s husband, stood off in the distance behind her holding up an ace of spades.  After sighting the card in the knife blade, she squeezed the trigger.  The gun barked.  A hole appeared where the spade had been in the center of the card.

The crowd burst into cheers.  Annie smiled, swung aboard her horse, and hurried out of the arena.  As she rode past Buffalo Bill Cody, he shouted, “Sharp shooting, Missy!”

The Sioux Indian chief Sitting Bull greeted the 5-foot-tall performer backstage.  Impressed with her skill and aim, the warrior proudly called her Little Sure Shot.  Sitting Bull believed Annie Oakley to be possessed by the Good Spirit.  “No one can hurt her,” he told friends.  “Only one who was super naturally blessed could be such a dead shot.”

To learn more about Annie’s life and shooting ability read

The Trails of Annie Oakley.

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Fans of Annie Oakley sought the famous shooter out after ever performance.  In addition to granting requests for autographs, she took time to speak with her followers who wanted to know all about her.  As a courtesy to her devotees, she supplied them with a short list of facts about herself.

Answers to Ten Questions I Am Asked Every Day.

I was born in Woodland, Ohio.

I learned to shoot in the field.

I do not think I inherited my love of firearms from my parents, for they were Quakers, and were very much opposed to my using such weapons.

Having traveled in fourteen countries, and having hunted in almost all of them, I have shot nearly all kinds of game.

While I love to shoot in the field, I care very little for exhibition shooting, and only do it as a matter of business.

I never use the word “champion” in connection with my name and always request my friends not to address me as such.

My guns weigh about six pounds each and are of many different makes.  There is no such thing as the best gun maker.  The best gun is the gun that best fits the shooter.

I use pistols, rifles and shotguns.  I do not believe in using cheap guns.  To me, the use of a cheap gun is like driving Star Pointer with a clothes line – you never know when the line is going to give way.

I like pigeon shooting when the birds are first-class flyers, but I am very much opposed to shooting pigeons from the trap during the three summer months.

I use 39 grains of Schultz Smokeless Powder and one ounce of shot, loaded in the U.M.C. Smokeless shells.  I don’t say that this is the only load, but it is good enough for me.

To learn more about Annie Oakley and the shooting school she ran in Pinehurst, North Carolina, read The Trials of Annie Oakley.

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Long before the screen placed the face of Mary Pickford before the eyes of millions of Americans, this girl, born August 13, 1800 and who was christened Phoebe Anne Oakley Moses and was destined to make the shortened form her name, “Annie Oakley,” known throughout the world, had won the right to the title of the first “America’s Sweetheart.”

The life story of Annie Oakley is a combination Cinderella fairy story and frontier melodrama.

The Cinderella part of it begins with the pioneer home near a small cross-roads settlement to Darke County, Ohio, where in a little log cabin lived Jake Moses and his wife, whom, as a twelve-year-old child he had rescued from a brutal stepfather in Pennsylvania.  He had given her a home with her sister and, after marrying her, when she was fifteen, set out with her to make a new home in the Ohio country.  In this new home Moses and his wife fought a constant battle with privation and poverty.  Then Moses returning from the saw mill, was frozen to death in a blizzard and upon the mother fell the whole task of carrying for her seven children.

At the age of six Annie began helping fill the family larder by trapping quail and a few years later she had made the first start on the rifle career that made her famous.  One of the few possessions that Jake Moses had brought with him from Pennsylvania was a 40 inch cap and ball Kentucky rifle which hung over the fireplace, but which had never been used because Moses was a Quaker with the Quaker prejudice against firearms.  The tomboy Annie, however, did not share that prejudice.  She saw in the weapon an instrument for getting more food for her brothers and sisters, and finally gained her mother’s reluctant consent.

But the beginning of her career as a markswoman was soon interrupted.  She went to the country infirmary to get the chance to attend school and while there a stranger appeared and offered to take one of the girls at the infirmary to work for her “board and keep.”  Annie was the girl selected and in the home of this man began her Cinderella existence.  The man was a brute and his wife a virago.  Annie was held as a virtual slave subjected to all sorts of cruel treatment.  Once when she fell asleep over a basket of mending the woman threw her out into a snowstorm half-naked.  After two years of this existence she finally escaped and returned home.

There she continued her former role of provider for the family with the rifle and thus laid the foundation for the marvelous skill which was to make her world famous.  News of her skill spread throughout Darke County and even to Cincinnati where hotel keepers had been buying the game which she killed.  When Annie was fifteen there came to Cincinnati the “far-famed team of Butler and Company, performing deeds of daring and dexterity with firearms, seldom exhibited before the eyes of an audience.  As a publicity stunt, Frank E. Butler was accustomed to issue a challenge to all comers to a shooting match.  The challenge was taken up by one of Annie’s hotel keeping patrons who prevailed upon her to shoot against the professional.

The girl not only won the match, but also won the heart of Frank Butler and a year or so later they were married.  Frank often wrote Annie poems that shared his plans for their future together.

Some find day I’ll settle down

And stop this roving life.

With a cottage in the country

I will claim my little wife.

Then we will be happy and contented,

No quarrels shall arise

And I’ll never leave my little girl

With the rain drops in her eyes.

Annie eventually began taking part in her husband’s act and for some time they were billed as “Butler and Oakley.”  Then Butler, who was a skillful showman, began giving his wife more and more of the limelight and pushing himself more and more into the background.  Within a short time, Annie was a noted figure in the Wild West theater.

“What fools we mortals be!  Annie once wrote of her beloved husband.  “My admiration for Frank Butler’s poodle led me into signing some sort of alliance papers with him that tied a knot so hard it lasted some fifty years.”

To learn more about the famous sharp shooter read

The Trials of Annie Oakley.

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Hearts West:  True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier

The following are a few advertisements that appeared in the September 12, 1917 edition of the matrimonial magazine The New Plan.

Ad #214  Hello, all you widowers and bachelors, right this way if you are looking for a companion; here she is, age 60, weight 100, height 4 feet 11 inches; black eyes, dark hair, American; Golden Rule religion, jolly and good natured; have means of $3,000; wish a husband with some means, city or country, age from 50 to 75; will answer all letters.

Ad #215  Boys, I am a lonesome little girl, alone in the world and earning my own living and am tired of doing so; my age is 20 years, weight 145, height 5 feet 3 inches, blue eyes, dark hair, good housekeeper, am considered good looking, have some means, also piano; common school education; prefer country life; will marry if suited.

Ad #216  Dear old men, here is your chance to get a true loving companion.  I am a widow by death, age 69 years, but don’t look or feel or act over 40; always in good humor, very loving and kind; a good housekeeper, weight 104, height 5 feet 2 inches, blue eyes, brown hair, nationality German; would like to meet some congenial gentlemen near my own age, with means enough to make a good home.

Ad #217  A perfect blonde; trained nurse, wishes to make the acquaintance of a nice young gentlemen, view to matrimony; age 23, weight 124, height 5 feet 3 inches; German-American, college education, very neat dresser; will answer all letters.

Read Hearts West:  True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier

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Hearts West:  True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier

During the late 1880s, Gold Country hostelries were literally filled with blushing brides.  Women arrived from eastern locations to wed the men they’d met through mail-order advertisements and set up house in the rich hills of northern California.  San Francisco was one of the most popular places in the country to honeymoon.  Couples found it to be a cheerful city with enough sights to occupy their time for months.  The presence of many new partners gave the location a sense of solace that helped make the mail-order pairs feel at home as well.  San Francisco innkeepers competed for the business of honeymooning couples, offering them a variety of goods and services in return for staying at their establishments.  The rivalry between the hotels was fierce and often made front-page news.

So great has become the competition between three or four of the leading city’s hotels in the solicitation for bridal couples that the most successful of the landlords in this effort presents each one of the brides who stop at his hostelry a beautiful bouquet or basket of cut flowers.  The clerk who receives the couple inquires of the bridegroom if he suspects a recent marriage – an it is seldom that a mistake is made – and then the flowers go up to the apartments engaged.

One of the most lucrative classes for the landlords is the newly married.  Beginning in October and ending in April, it is estimated that there are in the city an average all the time of two hundred pairs of brides and grooms.  The manager of the hotel which entertains most of them says he frequently has forty couples, and averages over twenty-five during the busy season.  They are, he says, the most desirable class of guests.  Always pleasant, they want the best of everything, and are given it.  This hostelry makes a feature of pleasing those people, and all embarrassments are lessened to the minimum.  Guests there are so used to seeing large numbers of brides and grooms that they are spared the stares so customary where this class is rare.

It is said to be the purpose of the great hotel company organizing here, and which intends to build a structure at a cost of $2,500,000, to arrange on floor with bridal apartments.

Matrimonial News – January 1887

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Hearts West:  True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier