#is a legend from Wild West. She was known as a sharpshooter

[aiiaiiiyo]

[xtruss]

Sharpshooter Annie Oakley holds a shotgun in a portrait from the mid-1880s. The larger-than-life legend who starred in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show has inspired TV shows, movies, and musicals—and many conflicting accounts of her life. Photograph Via Underwood Archives/Getty

The True Story of Annie Oakley, Legendary Sharpshooter

As a star of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, the 19th-Century Icon inspired TV shows, movies, and musicals. But her fame also has led to conflicting accounts of her life.

— By Emily Martin | May 31, 2022 | History & Culture | Explainer

Legend has it that Annie Oakley was such a skilled sharpshooter that she singlehandedly foiled train robberies, shot bears and panthers, and killed a wolf that already had her in its grip—or so claimed one 1887 novel based on her life titled The Rifle Queen.

Oakley’s fame as one of the most skilled gunslingers of her lifetime inspired many tall tales. (The wolf story, for example, never happened.) Some of these myths live on today thanks to the 1946 Broadway musical “Annie Get Your Gun,” whose final scene depicts Oakley losing a match intentionally to protect her future husband’s ego—when in reality she won his heart by beating him in a shoot-out.

It’s difficult to separate fact from fiction about Oakley’s life. As the star attraction of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show—a popular 19th-century act known for its romanticized portrayal of frontier life—Oakley showcased her talents on stages across the world for 17 years. She astounded audiences by shooting cigarettes from her husband’s lips, riddling playing cards in mid-air, and—her go-to trick—shooting a target behind her back while spotting it from a mirror.

Oakley’s reputation was largely crafted by her husband Frank Butler and the promoters of the Wild West Show. But some of Oakley’s own accounts of her life, and those of her descendants, still remain. Here’s the true story of the sharpshooter’s life.

Early Life

For starters, Oakley wasn’t the gunslinger’s real name: Born on August 13, 1860, as Phoebe Ann Moses—which the family sometimes spelled Mozee, Mosey, or Mauzy—she started using the stage name around the time she joined the Wild West Show in 1885.

Instead of the Wild West, Oakley was originally from Darke County, Ohio, and she had a rough start. After her father passed away when she was five years old, Oakley had to help provide for her family. Sue Macy writes in National Geographic’s Bull’s-Eye: A Photobiography of Annie Oakley that Annie helped feed the family by making traps to catch game before taking up her father’s rifle.

Oakley shoots a rifle over her shoulder using a hand mirror in a photo taken circa 1885. The trick was one of her favorites and it frequently impressed crowds. She was skilled with rifles from a young age after she first picked one up to hunt food for her family. Photograph Via Bettmann/Getty

Annie would tell the story of her first hunt many times, and even though details like what type of animal she killed changed over the years, she was certain she brought it down with a single shot.

“I don’t know how I acquired the skill,” she once said, according to Macy. “I suppose I was born with it.”

Tragedy struck again when Oakley’s stepfather died in 1870. Struggling to make ends meet, her mother sent some of her children to live with neighbors. A local farmer took Oakley into his home to help care for his children. Despite his promise that she’d have time for school and hunting, however, it quickly turned into indentured servitude.

She managed to escape and ultimately returned home to her mother as a teen. That’s when she started to regularly sell her kills to the local grocer and hotels, earning enough to pay off the mortgage on her mother’s house.

Her mastery of shooting became her career and even led her to meet her husband, fellow sharpshooter Frank E. Butler, in 1875. Oakley was visiting her sister in Cincinnati when she was invited to a shooting match with Butler.

Both Oakley and Butler hit every pigeon released from the trap, until Butler’s final shot fell beyond the boundary line, awarding Oakley the win. Soon after, the two were married and began performing together.

The Star of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show

In 1885, Oakley and Butler joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which would launch her to international fame. Oakley earned her spot in the company by hitting every clay pigeon Butler had launched in the air during a shooting practice.

Butler and Oakley traveled all over the U.S. with the Wild West Show company. The show, created in 1883 by Buffalo Bill, or William F. Cody, was an outdoor extravaganza of the fictionalized Wild West, including reenactments of cowboys battling Indians, shooting expositions, and skits showing off roping and horse riding. (Cody would later publicly renounce some of the show’s harmful depictions of Native Americans.)

Oakley quickly became the show’s main attraction since many audience members were stunned by the combination of her sharpshooting skills paired with her petite frame⁠. And she gained international renown in 1887 when the company performed at Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in London.

Oakley was billed as a headliner of the show, which the Queen and her son, Edward, the Prince of Wales, attended. Tales of Edward inviting the shooter to his box after the show have been corroborated by reports of the encounter, in which the prince described Oakley as a “wonderful little girl.”

Oakley and Butler soon branched out to give private exhibitions to European royalty before rejoining the Western show in 1889. Oakley even shot a cigarette out of German Prince Wilhelm’s hand—although not his mouth as some legends have it.

The couple finally left the Western show when Oakley was injured in a 1901 train accident. However, she continued to appear at exhibitions until she officially retired at 53.

An All-female Regiment of the U.S. Army

Beyond her iconic sharpshooting, Oakley was known for her volunteer and philanthropic work. Bessie Edwards, Oakley’s great grand-niece and cofounder of the Annie Oakley Foundation, writes in the foreword of National Geographic’s photobiography that Oakley donated time and money to tuberculosis patients, orphans, and young women seeking higher education.

Oakley was also passionate about teaching women how to shoot for sport and protection, and she’s thought to have taught more than 15,000 women to shoot over the years through free classes.

Oakley teaches women how to shoot circa 1918. She spent two hours each morning teaching free classes when she lived in Pinehurst, North Carolina, in the early 1910s. Photograph Via Bettmann/Getty

“I think every woman should learn the use of firearms,” she once wrote, according to Macy. “I would like to see every woman know how to handle [firearms] as naturally as they know how to handle babies.”

In 1898 she sent a letter to President William McKinley before the Spanish American War broke out and volunteered to organize a regiment of 50 American female sharpshooters—even though women were not allowed to serve in the U.S. military at the time. Her offer was denied by the War Department.

When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, Oakley again wrote a letter to the Secretary of War, offering to train a women’s division: “I can guarantee a regiment of women for home protection,” she wrote, “every one of whom can and will shoot if necessary.”

The secretary did not take her up on her offer, but Oakley still helped in the war efforts by giving shooting demonstrations at U.S. Army posts. She even trained her dog, Dave, to sniff out cash donations for the Red Cross, which people wrapped in handkerchiefs and hid for the dog to find—earning him the nickname Dave the Red Cross Dog.

Protecting Her Reputation From Tall Tales

Oakley worked furiously to build her reputation—and protect it from the gossip and libel that often accompanied her fame.

In 1890, newspapers worldwide reprinted a French report that she had died in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Oakley telegrammed reassurances from England, where she was on vacation and very much alive, and demanded that newspapers retract the report. Evidently, Macy writes, the paper had misspelled the name of the actual deceased, a singer named Annie Oatley.

Then, in 1903, two Chicago newspapers reported that Oakley was locked up in a local jail after pleading guilty to stealing a man’s pants to get money for drugs. The story was picked up nationwide. To set the record straight, Oakley wrote to the newspapers saying she had not been in Chicago for months. Most printed retractions when an investigation revealed that an actress with the stage name Any Oakley was the true culprit—but that wasn’t enough for Oakley.

She filed libel lawsuits against 55 newspapers and spent much of the next seven years testifying in court. According to Macy, she won or settled 54 of the cases and came away with more than a quarter of a million dollars.

Legacy

Oakley was soon considering other career moves, like starring in movies or writing a memoir, but her health declined rapidly after a car accident in 1922 left her with a permanent leg injury. In 1926, she was diagnosed with a blood disorder and died at 66 years old in Greenville, Ohio. Her husband, who had been visiting North Carolina for the winter, died 18 days later.

In spite of—or perhaps due to—the conflicting accounts of her life, Oakley’s reputation has endured through the years. Her tenacity and determination have become an inspiration for many, with her likeness appearing in TV shows, movies, and musicals.

“Aim for the high mark and you will hit it,” she’s reported to have said. “No, not the first time, not the second time, and maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting for only practice will make you perfect. Finally, you'll hit the bulls-eye of success.”

[spurgie-cousin]

Weird History Wednesday: Annie Oakley🤠

Born: August 13, 1860, Darke County, OH Died: November 3, 1926, Greenville, OH

Overly Quick Overview: Annie Oakley is a famous American sharpshooter associated with the American Western legend ‘Wild Bill’ or ‘Buffalo Bill’ Hickock.

1. Annie was actually born Phoebe Ann Moses. Her sister’s gave her the nickname Annie growing up, and she adopted Oakley as her stage name in adulthood. 

2. She was born to a poor family in Ohio, with a disabled father who died in 1866. After his death, she began hunting to help feed the family while simultaneously honing her shooting skills. Around the age of 13 she began selling the game she killed to restaurants, eventually making enough money to pay off her family’s farm mortgage at 15.

3. Legend has it that at 15, she beat 28 year old acclaimed marksman Frank Butler at a shooting competition. Whether this is true or not is disputed by historians, since it also seems like Annie might’ve lied a bit about her age throughout the years (see facts below). Regardless of her age, the two shooters got married approximately a year after she beat Frank at the shootout.

4. She joined the circus-like traveling show ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West’ with her husband in 1885. The show was an exaggerated exhibition of the fabled American West, which included many famous ex-outlaws, expert shooters, and Native Americans. The group famously performed for many overseas royal figures, including Queen Victoria and Kaiser Wilhelm II.

A promotional photo for ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West’ of Annie shooting over her shoulder using a mirror

5. A year after Annie joined BBWW, the group was joined by a younger female sharpshooter name Lillian Smith. Many historians believe that Oakley was threatened by the younger competition, and fudged her age when publicly recounting her life during the show to account for it.

6. In a letter to president William McKinley, Annie offered to train a regiment of sharpshooting women to fight in the Spanish-American War. She wrote, “....in case of such an event (escalated war) I am ready to place a company of fifty lady sharpshooters at your disposal. Every one of them will be an American and as they will furnish their own arms and ammunition will be little if any expense to the government.” McKinley denied her offer, as would Woodrow Wilson later on when she made the same offer during WWI.

7. During her time in BBWW, she became close friends with Native leader Sitting Bull, who gave her the affectionate nickname ‘ watanya cicilla’. It’s loosely translated as ‘little sure shot’, which BBWW would later use in their promotional ads and which Annie is still known by to this day.

8. Annie and her husband were included in one of the first recorded commercial filmings of all time (11th of any films to be exact) exhibiting their shooting abilities. They filmed at Thomas Edison’s Black Maria studio.

9.

Some of her famous shooting tricks included putting out the flame of a candle with her bullets, and shooting a hole through a cigar her husband was smoking on stage.

10. Annie continued shooting well into old age, mostly for philanthropic reasons to benefit women’s issues. At 60, she hit 100 clay targets in a row from 16 yards at a North Carolina shooting competition in 1922. 

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Dying @ the Borderlands AU post to be honest. (At work. 8') ) GIVE US THE BORDERLANDS ACE ATTORNEY CONTENT WE DESERVE. (Did you ever actually post that fic with the train push-off though??) ... I should look into playing that game. (Those games? Heck if I know. I like the artstyle though.)

I posted the first chapter of the fic, though at some point as I massaged out details, I did start trying to rewrite that chapter. So plot-location-wise, that’s a bit of a mess, but the general vibe of it is the same.

I think I had some other completed excerpts I never posted, and so if I get to writing up a huge big summary of the thing, which I want to do now, I can intersperse it with a few written bits. There was a thing with Ema, and then later with Kay.

(Those games, yeah, there’s three shooters and then one….idk how to describe Tales from, I own it and haven’t played it. But yeah, there’s Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and Borderlands the Pre-Sequel for the shoot-em-up main entries of the series that I’ve played. I love all of them, but I love the Pre-Sequel a little less because low-grav combat made me want to die.)

To summarize the AU, or the start of it, for everyone who doesn’t remember/wasn’t here, the main cast, and what their class names would tentatively be in-game, include:

APOLLO, the Sharpshooter, a sniper with an eyepatch who never misses a shot

(The eye patch is significant, I’ll come back to Apollo’s powers in another post.) He lived on Elpis for most of his life – Elpis is the moon of Pandora, which is the planet that most of the games take place on – and until the start of the story, works for the corporation Hyperion with his best friend Clay, an engineer. They’ve both come to be pretty important in Hyperion’s ranks, pretty quick – Apollo for his sniping skills is the personal bodyguard/assistant to Hyperion’s CEO, Kristoph, while Clay is one of the top engineers and most valuable people except for periodically when they’re forced to pay out the ass to run some antivirus/debug software on his brain, because Clay has a USB port in his head and sometimes he tries to download every cat video ever and gets a virus. Kristoph puts up with this, barely. (It is not the worst financial crime being committed in Hyperion’s ranks. Klavier is embezzling millions into pointless endeavors and Kristoph can’t lock him out of the system no matter what he tries. But that is, again, something to come back to later.)

Apollo and Clay start to suspect that there is a lot amiss about Hyperion and the kinds of experiments they do and what they want from Pandora, and together they start investigating into what, exactly, Kristoph is doing. In the midst of this, Clay is (apparently) killed, and Apollo not allowed to investigate anything about his death. This is the final straw, so Apollo takes what he knows, destroys what he can on the way out, and flees the Hyperion moonbase and Elpis, stowing away on a freighter shipment down to Pandora, intending to disappear into the wilds of Pandora. 

CLAY, however, isn’t dead – just in a coma, with his brain wired into Hyperion’s mainframe. He hacks the ECHOnet to get into Apollo’s communicator and serves as a “voice from above” font of “advice” and “wisdom”. (He’s taking the role of, to quickly spoiler-free summarize from the games, the Guardian AI called Angel, who throughout Borderlands and 2 offers advice and points you in the direction you need to go on your quest. Clay is an infinitely shittier at his job version.) Because of some limitations hacked into his brain, he can’t tell Apollo that he’s Clay, that he’s alive, and that he’s sort of being forced into trying to manipulate Apollo and friends into doing Hyperion’s bidding, but he can be very inefficient at it and sabotage from within as best he can. Also, sometimes he accidentally sabotages, like when he’s like “I’ve made the calculations and your vehicle can definitely make this jump” and they try it and crash because he was using the gravitational constant of Elpis, which has much less gravity than Pandora. 

On landing on Pandora, Apollo is waiting for one of the Hyperion trains that still runs to take him west and get as far away from this landing site as he can. There, he meets three other travelers and apparent fugitives:

ATHENA, the Berserker, who takes on robots with her fists and a sword and maybe sometimes she’ll use a shotgun;

KLAVIER, the Doppelganger, the spitting image of Hyperion’s CEO;

and TRUCY, the Siren, one of six women throughout the galaxy marked with strong magical powers and glowing tattoos that make her a target for everyone who knows the legend.

Hyperion robots stop the train and begin a search for the fugitive Apollo – the four of them take down the robots and jump off the train, and that’s where their adventures really begin.

ATHENA and TRUCY have a mind to go to the city of Sanctuary, the only free city on Pandora that isn’t corporate-owned or a bandit shithole. Trucy’s father and all her friends live in Sanctuary; Athena, too, lived there for a few years. Before that, they both lived in the city of New Haven, which was razed by Hyperion in their search for the man who screwed Kristoph out of getting his hands on a piece of the Vault Key and a Siren.

-inhales- quick more Borderlands plot context. Vaults are ancient alien caches of powerful weapons, treasure, or monsters scattered throughout the galaxy. These can only be opened by special keys, which are ancient artifacts that tend to be broken and scattered in pieces. In Borderlands, a corporation called Atlas and their military arm, the Crimson Lance, are trying to acquire all the pieces of the key scattered across Pandora to open a Vault to get the loot inside of it. You play as a Vault Hunter, who are not-quite-bandits who for whatever reason are interested in the lore of the Vault, or just kinda ended up on Pandora and fell into it accidentally. In Borderlands 2, about five years later, Hyperion is going after a different Vault, also on Pandora, also with the key in pieces, but the opening of the first Vault in the first game has done some funky stuff to the planet in the form of a mineral called Eridium. Both times, you are trying to stop the corporations from getting to the Vault, with help from some allies, such as the AI Angel and an independent resistance group, based first in New Haven, then in Sanctuary and called the Crimson Raiders, headed up by some of the player characters from the first game. In 2, the Vault Key can only be used naturally once every 100 years; otherwise, it has to be artificially charged with an Eridium-powered Siren. Thus, Hyperion needs a Siren. 

phew okay back to the AU, context thus set for Trucy.

TRUCY has spent a few years traveling Pandora on her own, trying to learn more about Eridium and its connection to her Siren-powers. At this point, however, she’s had enough being on her own, and wants to go back home to Sanctuary. She knows she’s a Hyperion target, and that’s partially why she’s been out on her own. She wanted to protect her friends and family. But she’s been reasonably undetected thus far, so she thinks she’s safe. Safe enough as anyone can be on Pandora. She wasn’t born on Pandora, actually, though her mother was from here. She spent the first years of her life living with the Troupe Gramarye, a gang of notorious con-artists who traveled the galaxy scamming people and looking for Vaults. How’d she fall in with Phoenix? Maybe that’s for next time.

ATHENA was not actually born on Pandora, either. She was born with strange, non-Siren powers, probably from her mother’s exposure to weird alien elements; Metis tried to keep this secret and devise ways to help Athena, but eventually people found out, wanted to turn Athena into a lab rat, and so Metis fled to Pandora, knowing its reputation for lawlessness because one of her former coworkers, a woman named Aura, fled there after she vaporized three people for stealing and copyrighting her own personal work. Aura’s brother followed her, after stabbing the people who showed up on his door looking for Aura. Metis knows she can rely on them, and so she takes Athena and goes.

Athena just acclimated really, really well to Pandora. In the course of fighting against Hyperion, however, some time after the attack on New Haven, Metis is murdered by an unknown infiltrator. Simon and Aura agree that they can’t raise and protect Athena the way she deserves, not when they are both dead-set on avenging Metis, and so Simon takes Athena off-world and settles her down somewhere safe. She has a normal teenager-hood in a normal part of the galaxy, goes to college, gets a degree in psychology – all the while chafing at the normalcy of it all. When she’s confronted with her massive amount of college debt, she says her final “fuck it” and abandons her responsibilities to run home to Pandora and find Simon again.

She hilariously has zero secrets that she’s keeping from the others. 

And KLAVIER was born and lived most of his life on Elpis – not that he says it, or much of anything, about himself to the others. He has obvious affiliation with Hyperion, but since Hyperion’s ‘bots are out to kill him as much as they are Athena and Trucy, they both accept that he’s on their side. Apollo isn’t quite so sure, because Apollo knew Kristoph and knows that Klavier looks just like him, thus knowing that Klavier was probably someone very important in Hyperion. 

Except Apollo can’t say that, because Kristoph (unlike Handsome Jack, Hyperion’s egomaniacal CEO in the games) doesn’t plaster his face everywhere and make himself well-known, so the fact that Apollo recognizes Klavier’s face to be shocked at him means that Apollo was also someone important in Hyperion to know Kristoph and so Apollo and Klavier are just the Spider-Man Pointing meme at each other over their Hyperion involvement. Except Hyperion has bounties on both their heads, so they’re like, okay, okay, cool, I guess I will tolerate you.

After some horrible misadventures involving Pandoran wildlife, which Klavier and Apollo are not prepared for even though Elpis also has horrible wildlife, they reach Sanctuary. Sanctuary is home to the resistance against Hyperion, called the Crimson Raiders, made up of random people and some of the remains of Atlas Corporation’s Crimson Lance who were hunting the Vault years earlier. There in Sanctuary, they catch up with former colonel EDGEWORTH formerly of the Lance, and former commandant VON KARMA also formerly of the Lance. They were once sent to Pandora to acquire the key and quash the Vault Hunters who were chasing it; however, a certain persistent Vault Hunter and his Vault-researcher friends won them over to his side, and so they turned on Atlas and the Lance. The two of them run Sanctuary and the Raiders, Von Karma handling a little more of the military matters, and Edgeworth with the mayoral matters, but mostly, they’re an apparently seamless team. 

Aaaand….I think that’s enough for one post. I could probably do, like, four more posts? One for the rest of the people of Sanctuary, one for Apollo and Klavier’s various fucked-up backstory secrets, one for Gramarye Bullshit, and one mapping out the very loose plot points moving forward.

But I’ve spent like all day writing this, so I guess I’ll do this in installments if I’m reminded. 

[monicamichellefairytales]

Welcome to this weeks I Can't Believe that Happened your history podcast for kids or curious grownups so I thought that we would start today with the more unusual circus act and unusual is just because it wasn't traditionally what you would think of when you're thinking of a circus act there were no elephants but that that doesn't make this woman any less impressive her name was Annie Oakley and she was born in 1860 and things did not start out easy for her.Annie was born in Ohio and her father died when she was really young and she sent off to a farm when she with ten. Annie was treated really badly by the people who are taking care of her and she ran away and found her mother so she supported her family by going out and hunting and shooting game in the woods and selling the meat to a shopkeeper and she was an amazing shot. She was fantastic with a gun and her skills actually paid off the mortgage on her mother's house and she would enter shooting matches and toured as a champion.This is part of her story is problematic for me I have I have a teenager and I have children. Annie went into a match and shot against a champion name Butler and At 15 she beat him in the competition and he fell in love with her and they got married the next year. I was struggling on whether I should include that part of this or not but it is part of history and that is what happened I don't feel terribly comfortable with that part of her story but history very rarely makes me comfortable.Around 1882 is when Annie took the name Oakley and she join the vaudeville circuit which was known to be kind of a very low brow sort of entertainment but she really distinguished herself because she insisted on wearing more conservative costumes and at what are the events in St. Paul Minnesota and 1884 she attracted the attention of Sitting Bull who gave her the name t I am so sorry I am horrible pronunciation but translates to little sure shot and she rose through the show business ranks and joined the Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Circus and 1885 where she stayed for 17 years.We think of circus is as kind like a cool thing this show was so important and so exciting and it helped her become an absolute legend but she was also I will see you the whole United States and the world Annie Oakley with the Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show with even taken to London in 1887 where she got to meet Queen Victoria who called her "a very clever a little girl." and she absolutely was the British invasion in reverse. Annie Oakley was all over the British papers.Annie did leave the Wild West show for a few years because she had a real issue with a fellow sharpshooter at Lilian Smith and things got so bad that Oakley departed and left the show at the end of the London engagement and she returned to the stage and she also toured with a different wild West show. When Smith left the Buffalo Bill's show Annie rejoined them for another three-year tour of Europe that began in 1889 at the Paris Exposition.You might remember at the beginning of this that Annie Oakley began life incredibly poor and had a very difficult childhood and she was known for being so against spending money that she would actually siphon off lemonade and carry it back to her own tent. She's known for saying things like" I've made a good deal of money and my time but I never believed in wasting a dollar of it." She was an incredible person for giving to charities they gave money to orphans and she was really fantastic she did earn more money than any performer in the show except for Cody.Annie Oakley was actually known for doing things like shooting the cigarette out of her partner's mouth she is unparalleled in her marksmanship definitely worth a look over and amazing person.Sometimes you might hear things about the newspapers and telling stories got it back in the early 1900s there was very little that stopped news reporters from saying whatever they really wanted to and I'm sure that's gonna be another episode to you because there's a lot of talk about that now. In 1910 a very famous newspaperman called William Randolph Hearst published a fake article claiming that she was in jail for stealing. This hurt Annie tremendously because her highest ambition was to be considered a lady and she did file a lawsuit against the newspaper for liable.In 1913 she decides to retire and with her husband Butler that the man she had been married to for a very long time and they set up in Maryland and North Carolina. She would give hunting and shooting lessons to other women and performed at charity events. Entering into World War I Annie offered to raise up a group of amazing female sharpshooters but the government ignored her so instead she raise money for the Red Cross and by giving shooting demonstrations at army camps and all around the country. Annie died November 3, 1926, and I and her husband who she's been married to for 50 years passed away 18 days later. by Monica Michelle

[marys-blog]

Book Review--Calamity: A Novel

Calamity: A Novel is a work of historical fiction about the well-known western legend, Calamity Jane. Author Libbie Hawker writes about Martha Canary, aka Calamity Jane, in what is no doubt a more accurate portrayal than what was offered in the dime store novels written in Calamity’s own life time (1852 - 1903). The book is a Women Writing the West’s 2020 WILLA Literary Award Finalist.

Calamity Jane tells her story to a writer in a Deadwood saloon. She tells it honestly, without sparing details that taint her own reputation.

Martha Canary was orphaned at the age of twelve, the oldest of six children. Her mother had already died when her father packed up the kids and their few belongings to head west from Missouri. Martha saw her father shot and killed by an unhappy gambler, who also took her father’s winnings. Martha and the two older boys scraped by in the wilderness, caring for their three little sisters, one just a baby, finally stumbling into Salt Lake City, Utah. The siblings were separated then and Martha was on her own to earn a living.

Martha was never a pretty girl, and she was the first to admit it. Legends of the old west talk about her raving beauty and many talents, but in truth she had an ungainly body, tall as a man, with no redeeming features to call herself pretty. But she had many talents, was a successful oxen, mule and horse bullwhacker, and could shoot a pistol or rifle with great accuracy. Her greatest pleasure was to ride alone on a wilderness trail. She endured many hardships, and the disasters and calamities that befell her earned her the name of Calamity Jane.

At times her life ran smoothly, as was the period she spent with Wild Bill Hickok, the love of her life, albeit unrequited. In her later years she appeared in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show performing sharpshooting skills astride a horse.

The author superbly describes the people of the American West and the western landscape as it appeared then. In many respects the story is a sad one, but the author shows Calamity as a woman of courage, endurance, and independence, a woman who could find humor in tight situations.

I thoroughly enjoyed Calamity from beginning to end. It’s a large book, 497 pages in a hardback copy, but it’s a story alive with passion and warmth. I urge anyone who enjoys reading about “the old West” to read this highly entertaining novel.

[grantmkemp]

This is not Doris Day! .....

Born 167 years ago, today, May 1st 1852, Martha Jane Cannary, known as Calamity Jane (1852-1903), was a notorious American frontier woman in the days of the Wild West. As unconventional and wild as the territory she roamed, she has become a legend Few substantiated facts are known about Calamity Jane’s life, but much is known about the legend. It seems her biography is a mix of wild tales (many promoted by Jane herself), and plausibly accurate events. What is generally believed to be true is that she was born Martha Jane Cannary, possibly on May 1, 1852, in Princeton, Missouri. She was the eldest of as many as six children born to Robert and Charlotte (Burch) Cannary. Both parents were reputed to be unsavory, involved in petty crimes and often financially destitute. The family moved to Virginia City, Montana, in 1863, perhaps to find their fortune in the gold fields. Martha Jane’s father died soon after arriving in Salt Lake City, making her an orphan at twelve and the head of the family. She had grown up tall and powerfully built with many male characteristics. Illiterate and poor, she was forced to move from one place to another, taking any work available to survive. It is also believed that as a teenager she occasionally engaged in prostitution, as it was more lucrative and always in demand. It was during this time that the moniker, “Calamity” was given to her In 1875, Calamity Jane traveled with an U.S. Army troop into the Black Hills of South Dakota and soon drifted to the lawless town of Deadwood. At this point the legends surrounding her life become abundant and the facts harder to find. She is said to have had numerous affairs with some of the most notorious desperado's of the time. One such story was her relationship with Western legend Wild Bill Hickok, whom she probably did meet in Deadwood. Their alleged dalliance launched her name into the annals of Western folklore. Even Jane herself, in her autobiography, spun a wild tale of capturing Jack McCall, after he murdered Wild Bill. Nearly all historians discount any intimate relationship between the two and Deadwood’s own newspaper accounts report that McCall was captured by town’s people soon after he killed Hickok. Calamity Jane was also known for her softer side. In her autobiography, she takes credit for rescuing a runaway stagecoach fleeing from a Cheyenne Indian war party by bravely driving the coach to Deadwood with six passengers and a wounded driver. Her private life is even more fabled. In addition to her alleged relationship to Hickok, there were saucy tales, creatively recorded by Western dime novel authors, of wild sex, a child born, and even marriage to Hickok. There are numerous stories, with varying levels of credibility, that Jane was a wife and mother one time. Around 1885, she supposedly married a man named Burke (Edward or Clinton) and gave birth to a daughter in 1887. There are numerous accounts of her seen with a young girl in several small towns throughout the West in the 1880's and 1890's, but no marriage license or birth certificate exists. Calamity Jane’s fame grew even more in 1895 when she joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show performing sharpshooting skills astride a horse. For several years, she toured the Midwest, bringing a commercialized version of the rip-roaring west to American audiences. The work was never steady, as she reputedly got drunk and disorderly throughout the tours. Wherever she performed, she brought copies of her greatly exaggerated autobiography, which she sold to fans for pennies. By the turn of the century, her hard life was catching up with her. She suffered from severe alcoholism and poor health. In July 1903, she arrived at the Calloway Hotel in Terry, near Deadwood, where she died on August 1 or 2 at age 51. She was buried next to Wild Bill Hickok at Mount Moriah Cemetery in South Dakota. This is my colourised version of her 1880's studio portrait

Restoring Your Past  … Website

Restoring Your Past … on Facebook

[historicalfirearms]

Annie Oakley 

Born August 13th, 1860, in Ohio, Phoebe Ann Mosey, later known by a variety of stage names but most famously as Annie Oakley, became America’s most famous sharpshooter.  Equally proficient with pistol, rifle and shotgun Oakley made her name with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show which toured the US and the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

Oakley learned to shoot from her father and frequently hunted as a child. As an adult she debuted as a sharpshooter in 1875, when she beat her future husband Frank E. Butler, a professional sharpshooter, in a shooting match. Oakley and Butler first performed together in May, 1882 with Oakley standing in for Butler’s normal partner. They began touring the US as a double act before joining Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in 1885.    

During her long career Oakley was said to have used guns from a variety of American and European makers including shotguns from Lancaster, Purday, Spencer, Scott, Ithaca and Webley. As well as rifles from Winchester, Stevens, Marlin and Remington. She favoured Colt, Stevens and Smith & Wesson pistols. 

In April 5, 1898 Oakley wrote to President William McKinley offering to form a company of fifty lady sharpshooters in the event of war with Spain. While the US did go to war with Spain her offer was not taken up. Later in 1917, she would again offer to form a female sharpshooting corps, her offer was not accepted.

Edison Kinetoscope footage of Annie Oakley and her husband Frank Butler in action in 1894 (source)

Oakley won numerous shooting prizes, competitions and awards throughout her career including the Police Gazette Championship medal. By 1890 she had star billing and was a household name. The sharpshooting couple left Buffalo Bill’s show in 1901 but continued to perform. 

After William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers printed a story reporting Oakley as a cocaine addict in 1904, Oakley embarked on a six year legal battle to clear her name sueing Hearst for libel. She won 54 out of 55 cases and was awarded $27,000 in compensation. The truth was that a burlesque dancer, using Oakley’s name, had been arrested in Chicago for theft to feed her habit. 

The couple retired in 1913, in her later years Oakley gave shooting lessons to women and advocated equal pay for equal work but was reluctant to support universal suffrage. She intermittently returned to performing until the end of her life. When the US entered World War One in 1917, Oakley volunteered her time to the National War Council of the Young Men’s Christian Association, War Camp Community Service, and the Red Cross. 

In the early 1920s Oakley’s shooting demonstrations continued to draw large crowds but a car accident in 1923 left her severely weakened. In November, 1926 both Oakley (aged 66) and her husband (aged 79) died, just three weeks apart. Oakley remains the most famous female sharpshooter, her proficiency with firearms has entered legend. 

Sources:

Images: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Annie Oakley, HistoryNet, (source)

Annie Oakley (1860 – 1926), Buffalo Bill Center of the West, (source)

Annie Oakley, Annie Oakley Center Foundation, (source)

If you enjoy the content please consider supporting Historical Firearms through Patreon!