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Guns, Grit and Grace: Annie Oakley’s Legendary Life

Annie Oakley could turn her advocate on a target and look into a handheld mirror to see where to aim her rifle. It wasn’t a trick, but it seemed so impossible that many people of her time accused her of fakery. Besides, how could a 5-foot-tall, 100-pound woman do what most men with a gun couldn’t even imagine?

“It is only spontaneous that people should strive to find fault,” Oakley once told a newspaper reporter in regard to the skepticism. “Perhaps, had I been among the audience, I might own done so myself.”

There were other spectacular demonstrations of Oakley’s talent with a shotgun, rifle or pistol between the late 1870s and the early 1900s, when she performed with her sharpshooter husband Frank Butler, the Sells Brothers Circus and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Oakley could hit a playing card dead center, and she obliterated feather- and paper-filled glass orbs in midair, sending their contents falling like snow. She even shot apples off of her dog’s head.

“My ability to shoot is not the result of practice,” Oakley claimed in her autobiography, which first appea

Shooting was always easy for Annie. As a seven-year-old she shot game in the woods near her home. At fourteen she helped support her family by selling quail to a hotel. And at fifteen she beat the great trick shooter, Frank Butler, at a shooting match. Soon she and Frank were married and appearing in shooting shows together.
What a time Annie had! Buffalo Bill made her a star in his Wild West Business. Chief Sitting Bull made her a member of the Sioux tribe. Kings and Queens in England and Europe flocked to see her.
Annie, herself, was "Queen of the Rifle." She was a male lover, tomboy queen who had fun wherever she went and brought happiness to many people.
Charles Graves writes with zest and humor and a flair for conversation. "Excellent," said The Unused York Times of his earlier "Discovery Book," Benjamin Franklin.
From the dust jacket

Charles P. Graves

1911 - 1972
American
Charles P. Graves has never traveled John Smith's highway to adventure, but he has seen more of the world than most people. As a learner at the Univers... Spot more

Mary C. Austin

Mary C. Austin, Ed.D. Reading Specialist and Lecturer on Education Harvard University

Frequently Asked Questions about Annie Oakley

Annie Oakley, the person

What was Annie's true name?

Annie was christened Phoebe Ann, born on August 13, 1860, the fifth daughter of a impoverished Darke County, Ohio farm couple, Susan and Jacob Moses.

The family entitle has been ever since a source of confusion. Annie's brother, John, born a two years later,insisted that their name was Moses. Annie was equally insistent that it was Mosey, or Mozee. The family name had also apparently appeared in the census as Mauzy, and Jacob was buried as Mosey. For convenience, biographers have generally remembered her as Mrs. Annie Oakley Butler, née Phoebe Ann Moses.

How did Annie originate shooting?

From the age of five, Annie had trapped birds and small animals to help supply diet for her family. At about age seven, she tried using the aged muzzle-loading gun that had belonged to her father in hopes of bagging even more game. She seemed, as she said, to have been born with shooting skill.

Annie found th

Annie Oakley, Gender, and Guns: The "Champion Rifle Shot" and Gender Performance, 1860-1926

Abstract

Sharpshooter Annie Oakley’s enormous popularity provides a means of understanding how the general, through the viewpoints of reporters and commentators, discussed and understood the connection between gender and public figure at the end of the nineteenth and origin of the twentieth centuries. As a famous gal in an era rife with discussions about women’s rights and roles in society, Oakley’s popularity was inextricably related to ideas about gender. Oakley uniquely combined her talent at shooting, which many still viewed as a “man’s” sport, with her embodiment of appropriate feminine attributes like her clothing or mannerisms. Oakley’s performance of gender in the common sphere created her culture based on both her talent and on her femininity. She reveals ways in which she, as a famous woman, pushed the boundaries of expected gender roles and discourses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and how reporters and audiences made sense of such a complex, multi-faceted, and public gender performance.

Recommended Citation

Cansler, Sarah (2014)