Facts about Annie Oakley

Annie Oakley Biography Summary: Annie Oakley (1860 - 1926) was famous for being a talented exhibition and sharpshooter.

For her time Annie Oakley became one of the best paid female performers of her time. Second only to Wild Bill she was the highest paid member of the show.

Together Annie and her husband Frank Butler gave to charity on a regular basis.

She also proved a terrific role model for many women of the day and encouraged women across the states to learn how to handle a gun.

She would also make her mission to see women become more independent and better educated.

Annie Oakley Fact Sheet: Who was Annie Oakley? The following short biography and fact sheet provides interesting facts about the life, times and history of Annie Oakley.

Annie Oakley Fact File Biography: Lifespan: 1860 - 1926 *** Full Name: Phoebe Ann Mosey *** Nickname: Annie Oakley, Miss Annie Oakley, Little Sure Shot, Little Miss Sure Shot, Watanya Cicilla, Phoebe Anne Oakley, Mrs Annie Oakley, Mrs Annie Butler and Mrs Frank Butler *** Date of Birth: Annie Oakley was born on August 13th 1860 *** Place of Birth: Annie Oakley was born near Willowdell, Ohio, United States *** Religion: Annie Oakley family were Quakers *** Occupation: American Sharpshooter and Exhibition Shooter *** Date of Death: Annie Oakley died on November 3rd 1926 *** Place of Death: Annie Oakley died in Greenville, Ohio, United States ***

Annie Oakley Fact 1: Annie Oakley was born on August 13th 1860 near Willowdell, Ohio and would become a famous sharpshooter and exhibition shooter.

Annie Oakley Fact 2: Family: She came from a family that were Quakers. The names of her parents were Jacob Mosey and Susan Wise. Both of her parents were of English descent. Siblings: She grew up with eight siblings although of nine children only seven survived, Mary Jane, Lydia, Elizabeth, Sarah Ellen, John and Hulda. Her father was a veteran of the War of 1812 although he would become an invalid having been overexposed during a blizzard in 1865 and at sixty six years of age succumbed to pneumonia the following year. Her mother remarried and had another child, Emily, but would again be widowed.

Annie Oakley Fact 3: Education: She was educated very sporadically as a child because of the poverty suffered by the family after her father died.

Annie Oakley Fact 4: When she was nine years old she was taken in to the Darke County Infirmary together with her sister Sarah Ellen where Annie was looked after by Samuel Crawford Edington the superintendent of the infirmary together with his wife Nancy who was responsible for teaching Annie how to sew and decorate.

Annie Oakley Fact 5: By the early spring of 1870 she would be “bound out” to a family locally and enlisted to care for the infant son of the family with a promise of an education and fifty cents a week which probably did not transpire.

Annie Oakley Fact 6: She would spend the next two years in this state of pseudo slavery and where she would also suffered both physical and mental abuse.

Annie Oakley Fact 7: She ran away and made her way back to her mother’s home when she was approximately fifteen years old.

Annie Oakley Fact 8: As a small child she was able to hunt, trap and shoot to help her mother support her family, selling what she hunted to the other local families. By the time she was fifteen she had paid sufficient funds to clear the mortgage on the family home so proficient had she become that she had begun selling to local restaurants.

Annie Oakley Fact 9: As a result of her marksmanship she began to gain quite the reputation throughout her district.

Annie Oakley Fact 10: In Cincinnati on Thanksgiving Day in 1875 the Baughman and Butler shooting act was performing. Frank E. Butler was a former dog trainer of Irish descendants and wagered a bet of one hundred dollars that he could outshoot any local by Jack Frost a hotel owner in Cincinnati.

Annie Oakley Fact 11: Jack Frost proposed five foot tall Annie and on the twenty fifth shot Butler missed and lost the bet as well as the match. The pair began seeing each other romantically and married in August of 1876. They would not however have any children together.

Annie Oakley Fact 12: For a short period of time the two lived in Cincinnati and it was thought that Annie adopted the name Oakley from the area that they live in, other’s believe it may have been the name of the man the man that helped her purchase a train ticket as a child.

Annie Oakley Fact 13: In 1885 both Annie Oakley and her husband Frank started working for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

Annie Oakley Fact 14: Although Annie Oakley got on well with other members of the troupe when Lillian Smith joined the show in 1886 she was only fifteen years old at the time and this may have been a cause for Annie to start lying about her age. She left the Wild West Show for a couple of years and by the time she returned Lillian had moved on.

Annie Oakley Fact 15: In 1901 she was involved in a train accident in which she was severely injured but would recover having suffered temporary paralysis and after five spinal procedures.

Annie Oakley Fact 16: By 1902 she was appearing in a play specially written for her, The Western Girl, having left the Buffalo Bill Show.

Annie Oakley Fact 17: Throughout Annie’s life she always taught other women how to shoot and it thought she taught in the region of fifteen thousand women how to look after and use a gun.

Annie Oakley Fact 18: By 1912 both Annie Oakley and her husband Frank Butler were semi-retired. Near Choptank River in Cambridge, Maryland they bought a plot of land and had their own ranch style house built on it. They lived there for several years before moving on to North Carolina in 1917 and also made a return to public life.

Annie Oakley Fact 19: Annie Oakley Butler died on November 3rd 1926 of pernicious anemia in Greenville, Ohio aged sixty six. Her body was cremated and buried in Brock Cemetery near Greenville in Ohio.

Influence & Legacy of Annie Oakley: During a trip to Europe on the Paris Exposition of 1889 she performed for Queen Victoria, King Umberto I of Italy and President Marie François Sadi Carnot of France as well as other crowned heads of state. At one point she was requested by Kaiser Wilhelm II, newly crowned, to know the ash off a cigarette he held. It would later be suggested that had she perhaps missed the cigarette and killed the Kaiser World War I could have been avoided. There were rumors that she had written to him requesting a second attempt, with no reply.