Journal Notes

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It was three o’clock in the morning when Southern Railway Engine 75 collided with Western legends and showman Buffalo Bill Cody’s train outside Lexington, North Carolina, on October 29, 1901.  The rumble of the trains hurrying toward one another sounded like the gathering of a cyclone.  Whistles blew and brakes scraped hard against the rails in a desperate attempt to prevent the crash, but the impact was unavoidable.

The force of the engines smacking into one another caused the derailment of the cars in tow, and all at once the air was filled with flying missiles of iron and wood.  Smoke poured in great black streaks from the steam funnels, and the popping of steam rose high in the air.  A veritable hell of fire erupted.  Members of the cast and crew of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show fought madly in their attempt to crawl out the doors and windows of the overturned cars.  Horses trapped in the twisted, mangled debris whinnied and brayed frantically.

People rushed to the scene from nearby farmhouses and stood helplessly around the wreckage, holding their hands to their ears in order to shut out the frightful screams of the injured passengers and animals.  Gathering their composure, they fought to rescue the hurt from the coaches scattered about the landscape.  Slowly the suffering were lifted from the destruction and carried to a grassy field.  Many cried and groaned in pain, their heads and hands cut and blood streaming from their wounds.

Annie Oakley, world famous exhibition sharpshooter, was one of the unfortunate victims of the train wreck.  She was lying unconscious somewhere among the rubble.  The car where Annie and her husband Frank had been sleeping was turned upside down.  When the engines slammed into one another and their car tumbled over, the petite entertainer was thrown from her berth onto a trunk.  Before hitting the trunk with her back, she tried to break the fall by putting her hand out.  Both her hand and back were injured.  Frank suffered only minor cuts and bruises.  He carried his wife out of the wreckage to the spot where the other hurt passengers had been taken.  Annie’s eyes fluttered open long enough to see the severely damaged vehicle.  What once had been a speeding marvel was now a broken scrap heap.

To learn more about the accident that changed Annie Oakley’s life read The Trials of Annie Oakley

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Annie Oakley was born Annie Moses on August 13, 1860, in Darke County, Ohio.  Her father’s untimely death when she was still a child forced Annie to find work to help support her seven brothers and sisters and their mother.

Annie first learned to hunt with a rifle when she was eight.  She used her natural markswoman ability to provide food for the evening meals.  She became such a good shot she was hired on by a merchant to supply his store with fresh game.  By the time Annie turned nine, she was a major provider for her family.

A shooting match between Annie and Western showman Frank Butler in 1875 changed her life forever.  The challenge was for each marksman to shoot twenty-five clay pigeons.  Frank hit twenty-four of the twenty-five targets.  Annie hit all of them.

Frank was so taken by the young woman’s expertise and femininity that he invited her to come and see him perform in one of his Western programs.  She was impressed with his kindness and proficiency with a weapon.  After a short time, their mutual fondness and admiration blossomed into love.  They were married on June 22, 1876.

Frank and Annie pooled their talents and took their shooting know-how on the road.  The two gave exhibitions at theaters across the country.  By this time Annie had changed her name to Oakley.  She decided on that name because she’d liked the sound of it ever since her sister told her of the Ohio district with the same handle.

Butler and Oakley were well received wherever they performed.  People were not only amazed at the teenager’s shooting but admired the pluck of a girl who could hold a coin steady until it was shot from her fingers.  By December of 1884 Frank and Anne had become the top shooting act in the country.

To learn more about Annie and Frank read The Trials of Annie Oakley. 

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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

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

The New Plan was a mail-order catalog/newspaper that was in circulation from 1911 to 1917.  The following are a few samples of advertisements found in the September 1917 edition of the periodical.

Ad #101  Everybody says that I’m fine looking for my age; am honest, intelligent, neat and clean, kind-hearted and have a good character.  Age, 58; weight, 120; height 5 feet 2 inches; blue eyes; brown hair; fine homemaker.  Income, $200 per year.  Have real estate worth $4,000.  Object matrimony.  Will answer all letters.

Ad #102  A winsome miss of 22; very beautiful, jolly and entertaining; fond of home and children; from good family; American; Christian; blue eyes; golden hair; fair complexion; pleasant disposition; play piano.  Will inherit $10,000.  Also have means of $1,000.  None but men of good education need to write from 20 to 38 years of age.

Ad #103  Would like to get married, because I’m lonesome.  Am considered rather good looking and of a lovable disposition.  Age, 35; height, 5 feet 5 inches; weight 145; hazel eyes; brown hair; American; occupation, stenographer and bookkeeper.  Will inherit a few thousand.  Will answer all letters.

Ad #104  Lonely in Pennsylvania.  Society has no charms for me; prefer a quiet life.  Am an American lady, with common school education; well thought of and respected; age 25; height 5 feet 9 inches; weight, 155; blue eyes; light hair.  Have means of $3,000.  Wish correspondence with good natured, honest, industrious man.

Ad #105 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.

To learn more about lonely hearts in the Old West 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

Tears slid down widow Mabel Haskell’s face and fell onto the blank piece of paper in front of her.  She sat poised, pen in hand over the monogrammed stationary, contemplating her life and lamenting her cheerless state of affairs.  The sad but striking-looking woman in her late forties had no family, no children of her own, and had lost her husband of twenty-three years ten months earlier.  She was lonely and fearful that she would always remain so.

Desperate for companionship, Mabel decided to advertise for a partner.  She knew other women whose solicitation for a spouse had been answered and a handful of those were fortunate enough to marry the men who replied.  Mabel wondered if she would be as lucky.  Blinking away tears, she decided the time was right to submit an ad to the popular publication The New Plan.  Perhaps an equally lonely gentleman would read the personal plea and seek her out.  Perhaps she would find love again.

Helping eligible men and women find one another, correspond, and marry was the main goal of The New Plan.  Published in Kansas City, Missouri, the magazine’s purpose was to unite lonely hearts, with various momentary and social background, who were unable to find a desirable life partner.

Ladies especially, whose opportunities are somewhat limited as to forming acquaintances, seek the method (proposed in The New Plan) knowing that in no other way have they so much advantage.  Don’t think because you are not wealthy yourself that you cannot get a rich party to marry you.  Love is not measured in lucre.  Morality, fidelity, respectability, ambition and beauty often tip the opposing weight of wealth on the matrimonial scale.  Women in affluent circumstances are not usually seeking an increase of wealth in marriage.  The self-respecting man of means, in seeking a wife is not seeking her for the property she may have.  We get many inquiries from both sexes who have plenty of means for two and who seek life companions of true worth and not for means.  We do business with such people constantly and know whereof we speak.  The New Plan Notice – 1917

The New Plan was circulated from 1911 to 1917.  The following are samples of advertisements found in the September 1917 edition of the periodical.  The first advertisement was submitted by Mabel Haskell.

Ad #1 – I am a lonely unemcumbered widow; age 48; weight 165; height, 5 feet 6 inches; big blue eyes; brown hair; fair complexion; American; religion, Methodist.  I have property worth $30,000.  A sunny disposition; considered very good looking.  Would like to hear from some good business man.  Object, matrimony.

Ad #2 – I do not pose as a beauty, but people tell me that I look well.  Enjoy fun and social gatherings.  Age, 27; weight 138; height, 64 inches; brown eyes; brown hair; fair complexion; American; very good disposition; plain dresser, but neat.  Prefer country life.  Income $20 per month.  Matrimonially inclined.

Ad #3 – 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.

To learn more about women and men seeking a spouse in the

Old West 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

The Matrimonial News, a San Francisco matchmaking newspaper, was dedicated to “promoting honorable matrimonial engagements and true conjugal facilities” for men and women through personal advertisements and was a forerunner of the matchmaking clubs and personal ads in newspapers today.  Not all of the matrimonial bureaus and agencies were legitimate, however, and many a disappointed bride or groom was left with empty pockets after contracting for a mail-order mate.

Here are a few of the ads posted in the January 8, 1887, edition of Matrimonial News.

283 – A gentlemen of 25 years old, 5 feet 3 inches, doing a good business in the city, desires the acquaintance of a young, intelligent and refined lady possessed of some means, of a loving disposition from 18 to 23, and one who could make a home a paradise.

287 – An intelligent young fellow of 22 years, 6 feet height, weight 170 pounds.  Would like to correspond with a lady from 18 to 22 years.  Will exchange photos:  object, fun and amusement, and perhaps when acquainted, if suitable, matrimony.

245 – I am 48, fat, fair, and plan on losing no weight.  Am a No. 1 lady, well fixed with no encumbrances:  am in business in city but want a partner who lives in the West.  Want an energetic man that has some means, not under 40 years of age and weight not less than 180.  Of good habits.  A Christian gentleman preferred.

241 – I am a widow, aged 28, have one child, height 64 inches, blue eyes, weight 125 pounds, loving disposition.  I am poor; would like to hear from honorable men from 30 to 40 years old:  working men preferred.

To read more Old West advertisements read

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