Annie Oakley

“Using a .22 caliber rifle at 90 feet (27 m), Oakley reputedly could split a playing card edge-on and put five or six more holes in it before it touched the ground.

“Annie began hunting at age nine to support her siblings and her widowed mother. She sold the hunting game for money to locals in Greenville, as well as restaurants and hotels in southern Ohio. Her skill eventually paid off the mortgage on her mother’s farm when Annie was 15.

“Traveling show marksman and former dog trainer Francis E. Butler (1850–1926), an Irish immigrant placed a $100 bet per side (roughly equivalent to modern US$2,000) with Cincinnati hotel owner Jack Frost, that Butler, age 31, could beat any local fancy shooter. The hotelier arranged a shooting match with Oakley, age 21, ….. After missing his 25th shot, Butler lost the match and the bet — a serendipitous irony that led him to become a well-known winner in backstage life. Butler began courting Oakley, and they married on June 20, 1882”

From the Buffalo Bill Historical Center website:
“Annie and Frank Butler first appeared in a show together on May 1, 1882. Butler’s usual partner was taken ill and Annie filled in by holding objects for Frank to shoot at and also doing some of her own shooting. It was at this time that Annie adopted the stage name of Oakley. Off stage, she was always Mrs. Frank Butler. For the next few years, the Butlers travelled across the country giving shooting exhibitions with their dog, George, as an integral part of the act.

“At a March 1884 performance in St. Paul, Minnesota, Annie befriended the Lakota leader Sitting Bull. The victor over George Custer at the 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull was impressed with Oakley’s shooting, her modest appearance and her self-assured manner. Although Sitting Bull was still a political prisoner at Fort Yates, he was in town for an appearance, and had arranged to meet Oakley. They became fast friends. It was Sitting Bull who dubbed her “Little Sure Shot.”

“In 1884, the Butlers joined the Sells Brothers Circus as “champion rifle shots,” but only stayed with the circus for one season. After a brief period on their own, Butler and Oakley joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in 1885. This was a significant turning point in Annie Oakley’s life and in her relationship with Butler. Until this time either Butler had received top billing or they had shared the limelight. However, with the Wild West Oakley was the star. It was her name that was on the advertising posters as “Champion Markswoman.” Butler happily accepted the position as her manager and assistant. Oakley and Butler prospered with the Wild West and remained with the show for sixteen years.”

“In Europe, she performed for Queen Victoria, and other crowned heads of state. Oakley had such good aim that, at his request, she knocked the ashes off a cigarette held by the Prince of Prussia, the future Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Annie Oakley Foundation suggests that she was not the source of a widely-repeated sarcasm related to the event, Some uncharitable people later ventured that if Annie would have shot Wilhelm and not his cigarette, she could have prevented World War I.

“Oakley continued to set records into her 60s, and she also engaged in extensive, albeit quiet, philanthropy for women’s rights and other causes, including the support of specific young women that she knew. She embarked on a comeback and intended to star in a feature-length silent movie. In a 1922 shooting contest in Pinehurst, North Carolina, sixty-two-year-old Oakley hit 100 clay targets from 16 yards.

“In late 1922, Oakley and Butler suffered a debilitating automobile accident that forced her to wear a steel brace on her right leg. Yet after a year and a half of recovery, she again performed and set records in 1924.

“Her health declined in 1925 and she died of pernicious anemia in Greenville, Ohio at the age of sixty-six in 1926. She was buried in Brock Cemetery in Greenville, Ohio. Butler was so crushed by her death that he stopped eating. He died just 18 days later.

“After her death it was discovered that her entire fortune had been spent on her family and her charities.”