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Annie Oakley
Annie Oakley (born Phoebe Ann Mosey; August 13, 1860 – November 3, 1926) was an American sharpshooter and folk heroine who starred in Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
Oakley developed hunting skills as a child in order to provide for her impoverished family in western Ohio. At age 15, she won a shooting contest against an experienced marksman, Frank E. Butler, whom she married in 1876. The pair joined Buffalo Bill in 1885, performing in Europe before royalty and other heads of state. Audiences were astounded to see her shooting out a cigar from her husband's hand or splitting a playing-card edge-on at 30 paces. She earned more than anyone else in the troupe except Buffalo Bill himself.
After a bad rail accident in 1901, she engaged in a less taxing routine, touring in a play about her career. She also instructed women in marksmanship, believing strongly in women's self-defense. Her stage acts were filmed for one of Thomas Edison's earliest Kinetoscopes in 1894. Since her death in 1926, her story has been adapted for stage musicals and films, including Annie Get Your Gun.
Annie Oakley was born Phoebe Ann "Annie" Mosey on August 13, 1860, in a log cabin less than two miles (3.2 km) northwest of Woodland, now Willowdell, in Darke County, Ohio, a rural county along the state line with Indiana. Her birthplace is about five miles (8 km) east of North Star. There is a stone-mounted plaque in the vicinity of the site, which was placed by the Annie Oakley Committee in 1981, 121 years after her birth.
Annie's parents were Quakers of English descent from Hollidaysburg, Blair County, Pennsylvania: Susan (née Wise), born 1830, and Jacob Mosey, born 1799, married in 1848. They moved to a rented farm (later purchased with a mortgage) in Patterson Township, Darke County, Ohio, sometime around 1855.
Born in 1860, Annie was the sixth of Jacob and Susan's nine children, and the fifth of the seven surviving ones. Her siblings were Mary Jane (1851–1867), Lydia (1852–1882), Elizabeth (1855–1881), Sarah Ellen (1857–1939), Catherine (1859–1859), John (1861–1949), Hulda (1864–1934) and a stillborn infant brother in 1865. Annie's father was sixty-one years old at the time of Annie's birth, and became an invalid from hypothermia during a blizzard in late 1865, dying of pneumonia in early 1866 at age 66. Her mother later married Daniel Brumbaugh, had another daughter, Emily (1868–1937), and was widowed once again.
Because of poverty following her father's death, Annie did not regularly attend school as a child, although she did attend later in childhood and adulthood. On March 15, 1870, at age nine, she was admitted to the Darke County Infirmary along with her 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. 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 per week (equivalent to $12 in 2024) and an education. The couple had originally wanted someone who could pump water and cook and who was bigger. She spent about two years in near slavery to them, enduring mental and physical abuse. On one occasion, the wife put Annie outside in freezing temperatures without shoes as a punishment for having fallen asleep over some darning. Annie referred to them as "the wolves". Even in her autobiography, she never revealed the couple's real names.
According to biographer Glenda Riley, "the wolves" could have been the Studabaker family, but the 1870 U.S. census suggests that they were the Abram Boose family of neighboring Preble County. Around the spring of 1872, Annie ran away from "the wolves". According to biographer Shirl Kasper, it was only at this point that Annie met and lived with the Edingtons, returning to her mother's home around the age of fifteen.
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Annie Oakley
Annie Oakley (born Phoebe Ann Mosey; August 13, 1860 – November 3, 1926) was an American sharpshooter and folk heroine who starred in Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
Oakley developed hunting skills as a child in order to provide for her impoverished family in western Ohio. At age 15, she won a shooting contest against an experienced marksman, Frank E. Butler, whom she married in 1876. The pair joined Buffalo Bill in 1885, performing in Europe before royalty and other heads of state. Audiences were astounded to see her shooting out a cigar from her husband's hand or splitting a playing-card edge-on at 30 paces. She earned more than anyone else in the troupe except Buffalo Bill himself.
After a bad rail accident in 1901, she engaged in a less taxing routine, touring in a play about her career. She also instructed women in marksmanship, believing strongly in women's self-defense. Her stage acts were filmed for one of Thomas Edison's earliest Kinetoscopes in 1894. Since her death in 1926, her story has been adapted for stage musicals and films, including Annie Get Your Gun.
Annie Oakley was born Phoebe Ann "Annie" Mosey on August 13, 1860, in a log cabin less than two miles (3.2 km) northwest of Woodland, now Willowdell, in Darke County, Ohio, a rural county along the state line with Indiana. Her birthplace is about five miles (8 km) east of North Star. There is a stone-mounted plaque in the vicinity of the site, which was placed by the Annie Oakley Committee in 1981, 121 years after her birth.
Annie's parents were Quakers of English descent from Hollidaysburg, Blair County, Pennsylvania: Susan (née Wise), born 1830, and Jacob Mosey, born 1799, married in 1848. They moved to a rented farm (later purchased with a mortgage) in Patterson Township, Darke County, Ohio, sometime around 1855.
Born in 1860, Annie was the sixth of Jacob and Susan's nine children, and the fifth of the seven surviving ones. Her siblings were Mary Jane (1851–1867), Lydia (1852–1882), Elizabeth (1855–1881), Sarah Ellen (1857–1939), Catherine (1859–1859), John (1861–1949), Hulda (1864–1934) and a stillborn infant brother in 1865. Annie's father was sixty-one years old at the time of Annie's birth, and became an invalid from hypothermia during a blizzard in late 1865, dying of pneumonia in early 1866 at age 66. Her mother later married Daniel Brumbaugh, had another daughter, Emily (1868–1937), and was widowed once again.
Because of poverty following her father's death, Annie did not regularly attend school as a child, although she did attend later in childhood and adulthood. On March 15, 1870, at age nine, she was admitted to the Darke County Infirmary along with her 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. 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 per week (equivalent to $12 in 2024) and an education. The couple had originally wanted someone who could pump water and cook and who was bigger. She spent about two years in near slavery to them, enduring mental and physical abuse. On one occasion, the wife put Annie outside in freezing temperatures without shoes as a punishment for having fallen asleep over some darning. Annie referred to them as "the wolves". Even in her autobiography, she never revealed the couple's real names.
According to biographer Glenda Riley, "the wolves" could have been the Studabaker family, but the 1870 U.S. census suggests that they were the Abram Boose family of neighboring Preble County. Around the spring of 1872, Annie ran away from "the wolves". According to biographer Shirl Kasper, it was only at this point that Annie met and lived with the Edingtons, returning to her mother's home around the age of fifteen.