The Sure Shot

Annie Oakley was born Annie Moses on August 13, 1860, in Drake 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 that she was hired on by a merchant to supply his store with fresh game.  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.  Buffalo Bill Cody hired Annie to join his Wild West cast in 1885. Annie packed the house nightly with her trick riding and trick shooting. Cody called Annie “the single greatest asset the Wild West ever had.”  Annie and her husband Frank enjoyed seventeen seasons with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. She retired from the program in 1902 and died of pernicious anemia in 1926 at the age of sixty-six years old.