Annie Oakley (August 13, 1860 – November 3, 1926), born Phoebe Ann Moses, was an American sharpshooter and exhibition shooter. Oakley's amazing talent and timely rise to fame led to a starring role in ''Buffalo Bill's Wild West'' show, which propelled her to become the first American female superstar.

Oakley's most famous trick is perhaps being able to repeatedly split a playing card, edge-on, and put several more holes in it before it could touch the ground, while using a .22 caliber rifle, at 90 feet.

Early life

Annie's parents were Quakers of English descent from Hollidaysburg, Blair County, Pennsylvania: Susan Wise, age 18, and Jacob Moses (1860 U.S. Census shows his father's name as Mauzy, born 1799), age 49, married in 1848. A fire burned down their tavern in Hollidaysburg, so they moved to a rented farm (later purchased with a mortgage) in Patterson Township, Darke County. The move occurred sometime between 1855 and her sister Sarah Ellen's Darke County birth in 1857.

Born in 1860, Annie was the sixth of Jacob and Susan's seven children but her mother also had another child named Emily. Her father, who had fought in the War of 1812, died in 1866 at age 65, from pneumonia and overexposure in freezing weather. Her mother married Daniel Brumbaugh, had a ninth child, Emily, and was widowed a second time.

On March 15, 1870, at age nine, Annie was admitted to Darke County Infirmary, along with elder sister Sarah Ellen. According to her autobiography, she was put in the care of the Infirmary's superintendent, Samuel Crawford Edington and his wife Nancy, who taught her to sew and decorate. Infirmary records indicate that William Thompson was Infirmary superintendent at the time, however Samuel Edington would assume that position in the beginning of 1871. Discrepancies between Annie's account and record supported facts are likely owed to fuzzy recollections. Beginning in the spring of 1870, she was "bound out" to a local family to help care for their infant son, on the false promise of fifty cents a week and an education. She spent about two years in near-slavery to them where she endured mental and physical abuse. She would often have to do boys' work. One time the wife put Annie out in the freezing cold, without shoes, as a punishment because she had fallen asleep over some darning. Annie referred to them as "the wolves". Even in her autobiography, she kindly never told the couple's real name. When, in the spring of 1872, she reunited with her family, her mother had married a third time, to Joseph Shaw.

Because of poverty following the death of her father, Annie was not regular at school. But later, she did receive some additional education. She rendered her surname as ending in "ee", while it appears as "Moses" on her father's gravestone and in his military record; it is the official spelling by the Annie Oakley Foundation maintained by her living relatives. Variations in the accepted surname spelling ("Moses") have included "Mosey", "Mosie", and "Mauzy". There is no known record to substantiate Annie's vehement assertion that the correct spelling is "Mozee".

Annie began trapping at a young age, and shooting and hunting by age eight to support her siblings and her widowed mother. She sold the hunted 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.

Debut and marriage

Annie Moses soon became well known throughout the region. During the spring of 1876, the Baughman and Butler shooting act was being performed in Cincinnati.

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 he, Butler, could beat any local fancy shooter.

The hotelier arranged a shooting match between Butler and the 15-year-old Annie "The last opponent Butler expected was a five-foot-tall 15-year old girl named Annie."

After missing on his 25th shot, Butler lost the match and the bet. He soon began courting Annie, and they married on August 23, 1876. They did not have children.

Career and touring

Annie and Frank Butler lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, for a time, and the stage name, Oakley, which she adopted when she and Frank began performing together, is believed to have been taken from the city's neighborhood of Oakley, where they resided. Some people believe she took on the name because that was the name of the man who had paid her train fare when she was a child.

They joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in 1885. At tall, Oakley was given the nickname of "Watanya Cicilla" by fellow performer Sitting Bull, rendered "Little Sure Shot" in the public advertisements.

During her first engagement with Buffalo Bill's show, Oakley experienced a tense professional rivalry with rifle sharpshooter Lillian Smith. Being eleven years younger, Smith promoted herself as younger and therefore more billable than Oakley. Oakley temporarily left the Buffalo Bill's show, but returned after Smith departed.

In Europe, she performed for Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, King Umberto I of Italy, Marie François Sadi Carnot (the President of France) 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 newly crowned German Kaiser Wilhelm II.

The Annie Oakley Foundation suggests that she was not the source of a widely-repeated quip related to the event, "Some uncharitable people later ventured that if Annie had shot Wilhelm and not his cigarette, she could have prevented World War I." After the outbreak of World War I, however, Oakley did send a letter to the Kaiser, requesting a second shot. The Kaiser did not respond.

Oakley promoted the service of women in combat operations for the United States armed forces. She wrote a letter to President William McKinley on April 5, 1898 "offering the government the services of a company of 50 'lady sharpshooters' who would provide their own arms and ammunition should the U.S. go to war with Spain."

The Spanish-American War did occur, but Oakley's offer was not accepted. Theodore Roosevelt, did, however, name his volunteer cavalry the "Rough Riders" after the "Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World" where Oakley was a major star.

Based on a story run in The Athens messenger, and just before Oakley's train accident; during a Wild Bill show held at the Athens County Fairgrounds in Athen's Ohio in 1901, a 9-year-old girl named Ethel Bell Nice, known around the local community for her shooting prowess, was prodded into a shooting contest with Annie, and won. Ethel went on to marry Thomas Gilbraith, and later taught soldiers stationed at her husband's military base how to use firearms.

The same year that McKinley was fatally shot by an assassin, 1901, Oakley was also badly injured in a train accident, but she recovered after temporary paralysis and five spinal operations.

She left the Buffalo Bill show and in 1902 began a quieter acting career in a stage play written especially for her, ''The Western Girl''. Oakley played the role of Nancy Berry and used a pistol, rifle and rope to outsmart a group of outlaws.

Most of the newspapers that printed the story had relied on the Hearst article, and upon learning of the libelous error they immediately retracted the false story with apologies. Hearst, however, tried to avoid paying the anticipated court judgments of $20,000 ($300,000, adjusted for inflation in 2008 dollars) by sending an investigator to Darke County with the intent of collecting reputation-smearing gossip from Oakley's past. The investigator found nothing.

Later years and death

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 on November 3, 1926. She was buried in Brock Cemetery in Greenville, Ohio. Butler was so grieved by her death that he stopped eating. He died just 18 days later, on November 21, 1926 in Michigan. Butler was buried next to Annie.

After her death, her incomplete autobiography was given to Fred Stone, the stage comedian, and it was discovered that her entire fortune had been spent on her family and her charities.

She was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas.

The Little Sure Shot of the Wild West

When Buffalo Bill performed, he decided to hire someone else instead of Annie. In 1894 Oakley and Butler performed in Edison's Kinetoscope film, ''The "Little Sure Shot" of the "Wild West," an exhibition of rifle shooting at glass balls, etc.'' Filmed November 1, 1894, in Edison's Black Maria studio by William Heise (0:21 at 30 frame/s; 39 ft.), it was about the 11th film made after commercial showings began on April 14, 1894.

Oakley's early movie star opportunity followed from Buffalo Bill's friendship with Thomas Edison, which developed after Edison personally built, for the ''Wild West Show'', what in the 1890s was the world's largest electrical power plant. Buffalo Bill and fifteen of his show Indians appeared in two Kinetoscopes filmed September 24, 1894.

Eponym

Representations on stage, literature and screen

See also

References

External links

Category:1860 births Category:1926 deaths Category:American folklore Category:Wild west shows Category:American entertainers Category:American people of English descent Category:Circus Hall of Fame inductees Category:People from Darke County, Ohio Category:Deaths from pernicious anemia Category:Burials in Ohio Category:National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame inductees Category:People of the American Old West

Early years

In 1912, he entered Hangchow University (later its major part merged into Zhejiang University) preparatory through examination. He was there only for a short period before he was expelled for participation in a student strike.

He then moved to Japan, where he studied economics at the Tokyo Imperial University between 1913 and 1922, where he met other Chinese intellectuals (namely, Guo Moruo, Zhang Ziping and Tian Han). Together, in 1921 they founded the ''Chuangzao she'' 創造社 ("Creation Society"), which promoted vernacular and modern literature. One of his earlier works ''Chenlun'' 沉淪, also his most famous, published in Japan in 1921. The work had gained immense popularity in China, shocking the world of Chinese literature with its frank dealing with sex, as well as grievances directed at the incompetence of Chinese government at the time.

In 1922, he returned to China as a literary celebrity and worked as the editor of ''Creation Quarterly'', editing journals and writing short stories. In 1923, after an attack of tuberculosis, Yu Dafu directed his attention to the welfare of the masses.

In 1927, he worked as an editor of the ''Hongshui'' literary magazine. He later came in conflict with the Communist Party of China and fled back to Japan.

Second Sino-Japanese war

In 1942 when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Singapore, he was forced to flee to Sumatra. Known under a different identity, he settled there among other overseas Chinese and began a brewery business with the help of the locals. Later he was forced to help the Japanese military police as an interpreter when it was discovered that he was one of the few "locals" in the area who could speak Japanese.

In 1945, he was arrested by the Kempeitai when his true identity was finally discovered. It is believed that he was executed by the Japanese shortly after the surrender of Japan.

Works

His most popular work, breaking all Chinese sales records, was ''Jih-chi chiu-chung'' "''Nine Diaries''", which detailed his affair with the writer Wang Ying-hsin. The most critically acclaimed work is ''Kuo-ch'u'' or "''The Past''", written in 1927.

References

External links

Category:1896 births Category:1945 deaths Category:Chinese expatriates in Japan Category:Hangzhou High School alumni Category:People from Hangzhou Category:Republic of China poets Category:University of Tokyo alumni Category:Zhejiang University alumni