The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (14 page)

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Authors: Glenda Riley

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Women, #History, #United States, #19th Century, #test

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abilities in a New York match. The following year, Mrs. S. S. Johnston of Minneapolis was only one of the lady contestants in the annual Grand American Handicap.
Oakley also encountered Lillian Smith on the match circuit. At the tenth annual Grand American Handicap, held in Kansas City in 1902, three women shooters took part: Oakley; Johnston, who described herself as strictly a sport shooter; and Lillian F. Smith, who claimed she had been shooting for only two years. Actually, Smith had been appearing on vaudeville stages under the name of Winona, an Indian princess, show-business-style. Annie outshot both Johnston and Smith, although her shooting captured no prizes. If Oakley faced Smith in other matches, both she and the newspapers failed to mention it.
With the exception of Smith, Annie maintained friendly relations with many of the women shooters who regularly appeared on the circuit. Frank once stated that "some of the best lady shots in the country" were counted among Annie's dearest friends. He continued, "As she was the pioneer in that line she is always proud when they score well, for what better monument can she leave behind than lady shots and lady gun clubs."
Women showed their appreciation for Oakley's efforts by flocking to see her shoot. For instance, a match in 1899 attracted what one viewer described as "a large number of lady marksmen." Women shooters also formed clubs in Annie's honor. One of the earliest, the Annie Oakley Rifle Club of Newark, invited her to their first annual ball on February 19, 1889. Dressed in a fitted lavender silk dress and buff-colored felt hat, Annie took part in the grand march. For the rest of the evening, colored gas jets glittered and music wafted through the pavilion. In the course of the festivities, the club presented her with a special horseshoe and a bouquet of flowers.
Public enthusiasm and interest also mounted as Annie won match after match. In 1887, a congregational minister in Jersey City even preached a sermon based on Oakley's shooting, which he declared a form of healthy recreation. He concluded by enjoining his congregation, "If you will all aim as straight for Heaven as Annie Oakley does at the objects she shoots at, you can all be 'Little sure-shots' and will be sure to get to Heaven."

 

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Others praised her in more prosaic ways. In 1887, a reporter termed her "queen of the female wing-shots." Later, in an 1891 letter, a shooting expert labeled her "Queen of Lady Shooters." Within the year, another commentator emphasized her patriotic value: "she keeps up the credit of the stars and stripes in a foreign land."
Consequently, huge numbers of people thronged to Oakley's matches. In 1888, one observer remarked that at a Philadelphia match, "thirty-one thousand people saw, or tried to see, this match." He continued, "The traps had to be moved farther out three times as the vast overflow from the large grandstand closed in."
Because Annie achieved such success in match shooting, other shooters and the public took great interest in the guns she used. During her lifetime, Oakley owned hundreds of firearms and once estimated that they would line her tent "on all four sides" if the guns were stacked close together. But she favored several over the rest, including plain Stevens pistols with walnut grips. Also, Annie often used a Stevens spur-guard Gould model single-shot .22-caliber pistol with a ten-inch, gold-plated barrel. She later bought to match a gold-plated, pearl-handled Smith & Wesson American model #3, a .44-caliber pistol.
Regarding rifles, Oakley once wrote that she used the caliber best suited for her work, often a .32. She also owned three Stevens .22-caliber sporting rifles, all produced between 1872 and 1875. Each had a wooden forestock and tip-down-style barrel. In 1895 she obtained one of her favorite rifles, a .32/20 Model 1892 lever-action repeater, specially made for her. In many of her tricks she featured this light rifle with a gold-plate receiver, half-round barrel, and fancy wood in the stock. Frequently, she also used this gun in her mirror trick when she shot over her shoulder at targets behind her. Annie also used a Marlin .22 repeating rifle. Marlin rim-fire repeaters first appeared in 1891 and gained great popularity with arena and other shooters who liked the Marlin's versatility in accepting the .22 short, long, and new long rifle cartridges. Oakley frequently split an ace of hearts with a Marlin Model '91, .22 caliber.
Among shotguns, early in her career Oakley favored a 16-gauge,

 

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hammer-type, especially the Parker Brothers models, but she often recommended the lighter 20-gauge, which eliminated some of the recoil and forced a shooter to make up for the gun's light weight with his or her own skill. London gunmaker Charles Lancaster made four or more shotguns for Annie during 1887, at least two of them 20-bores weighing only five pounds each. Annie also favored a Spencer repeating pump shotgun, which held six shells. With it, she set a new record by hitting six balls thrown into the air at once. Sometime around 1900, Annie stated that she preferred hammerless shotguns weighing about six pounds and that she often used 12-gauge shotguns because of the availability of ammunition.
Gun companies occasionally produced distinctive shotguns for Oakley. Grateful that her appearances publicized sport shooting for women, they built special editions as gifts for her or as advertising promotions. In 1889, the Hunter Arms Company of Fulton, New York, made for her an L. C. Smith 16-gauge, hammerless, double-shotgun; on the lock-plates were gold engravings, one of her as a girl, the other as a woman. The Hunter Company asked the celebrated New York jeweler Tiffany and Company to engrave the gold plates, which a Mr. Hartigan then mounted. One of Hartigan's colleagues, Charles Rogers, remembered that after Hartigan perfectly mounted the lock plates on the gun, his supervisors gave him a bottle of Napoleon brandy and the rest of the day off.
After the special Annie Oakley shotgun passed all inspections and tests, a company official laid it on a piece of black velvet for all the workers to take pride in and admire. According to Rogers, the gun gleamed like a jewel and, when presented to Annie, made her "a friend and booster for the L. C. Smith gun for the rest of her shooting career and life."
Still, Oakley resisted the temptation to give endorsements for specific types of guns and tried to maintain impartiality toward munitions companies. Early in the 1890s, she told a
Shooting and Fishing
correspondent: "There is Purdey; there is Grant; there is Lancaster; there is Francotte. Each makes a good enough weapon for anybody." She added that she used a Lancaster and a Francotte almost continually but could not say that one was "better than the

 

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other." She noted that she also owned a Premier Scott, which she thought "a good deal of."
During the mid-1890s, Annie explained further that she cared only that a gun be "of fine quality." She usually preferred plain guns with good wood in the stocks and open sights. Often she used guns produced by Parker Brothers of Meriden, Connecticut, those the Remington Company made before taking over Parker, and those of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. In her view, guns, rifles, and pistols came in many styles; saying that any one make was "superior to all others would show a very narrow mind and limited knowledge of firearms." She believed that the shooter's physique, type of game, and "fancy" should govern his or her choice of gun. "'The best gun' is the gun that best fits the shooter."
Oakley did speak, however, without equivocation on the issue of inexpensive guns. "I do not believe in using cheap guns." Shooting an inexpensive gun seemed to her "like driving Star Pointer with a clothes lineyou never know when the line is going to give way." She explained that she did not mean a gun should be expensive in its engraving and ornamentation. Rather, she meant a gun should have the qualities of "strength, safety, balance, fit and ease of manipulation." If, after finding these qualities in a firearm, purchasers had "that love for firearms such as the art-lover has for paintings," they might add ''such ornamentation.''
Oakley also favored specific types of ammunition. Throughout her career, she preferred Schultze powder. While in London in 1887, she mentioned her preference for Schultze powder. An official of another London powder company protested and reminded herand the publicthat she also used an equal quantity of his company's powder. He must have been further annoyed in October, when an official of Schultze Gunpowder Company, also of London, presented her with a gold medal bearing the Schultze trademark and her initials, commemorative of her stay in England.
Annie continued to maintain her allegiance to Schultze powder. In 1889, she smuggled some of her favorite Schultze powder into France, which forbade the importation of foreign powders.

 

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When her supply ran out, she turned to French powder, which exploded one of her guns and gave her a serious bruise. Frank concluded the French powder had a lot in common with the French match"both go off when good and ready." He maintained that no matter how carefully one loaded French powder into cartridges, no two ever fired alike. A friend saved the situation by sending her a dozen eggs packed in Schultze powder. "The duty on the eggs was about 40 cents, which I gladly paid," Annie remembered.
Because Oakley used such great quantities of ammunition, her reactions meant a good deal to the companies that produced it. In 1899, Frank estimated that Annie had fired forty-eight thousand shots during the past season at a cost of three hundred dollars a week. In a pamphlet issued around 1899, titled
Annie Oakley: A Brief Sketch of Her Career and Notes on Shooting
, Annie estimated that "the various shells, primers, wads and metallic cartridges" she had used would supply an army. She feared that the amount of ammunition she had consumed during her career would "appall most persons."
In this small pamphlet, available simply by sending in a two-cent stamp to cover return postage, Oakley came as close to a product endorsement as she ever would. She stated, "After what seems to me to be exhaustless experiments, I have selected Union Metallic Cartridge Co. ammunition as the most satisfactory to me." She explained that she used "UMC Smokeless Shells loaded with 39 grains of Schultze Smokeless Powder and an ounce of shot." In her rifles and revolvers, Annie used ''UMC Metallic Cartridges," which she said were not "the only load" but "good enough" for her.
No doubt, Frank influenced Annie's preferences. In fact, the writing style and content of the
Annie Oakley
pamphlet sound more like Frank Butler, who worked as a sales representative for UMC between 1901 and 1909. Undoubtedly, Frank's association with UMC also accounted for the picture of Annie that appeared on UMC cartridges.
Oakley gained fame as a match shooter, but she had to tolerate hazards as well. For one, Annie did not always win. In 1888, she

 

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lost one match to shooter Al Bandle of Cincinnati and another to Phil Daly, Jr., of Long Branch, New Jersey. A decade later, although she had more experience, she still lost occasionally. In an 1898 match, for example, she only tied for third place in a strong field of shooters.
Another danger of match shooting was the ever-present possibility of injury. In 1886, while practicing the day before a match against well-known shooter William Graham, Annie injured her left hand. As she put a target into a trap, the spiral spring flew out and cut her hand between the first and second fingers. According to her, the doctor "used a 14-inch catgut for five stitches." He also suspended her arm in a sling and ordered her to avoid using her hand for two weeks. The next day, Graham took one look at her and agreed to call off the match, but his backer claimed they had won by default and demanded the purse. Although Frank preferred to take the loss, Annie picked up a gun with her right hand and began to shoot.
"The birds were fast," she remembered, "but ran pretty even." Annie shot well, and she and Graham each brought down ten birds. On the eleventh, Oakley drew, in her words, "a streak of greased lightning." With her first shot, she cut the tail feathers off, then she whipped her left hand out of the sling onto the barrel so that she could fire a second shot. She ripped three of her stitches open, and blood began to flow. Frank dashed forward, called a halt to the proceedings, and told the audience they could have Annie's percentage of the gate. Annie remembered that she retired from the field ''amid cheers."
Inclement weather also created its share of difficulties. On January 16, 1888, in Merchantville, New Jersey, Annie Oakley again faced William Graham. Within minutes of her arrival at the shooting club, the temperature dropped to zero, and sleet shrouded the grounds. Frank rubbed brandy on her arms and hands and gave Annie one of her favorite Lancaster 20-bore guns. Approximately one thousand people watched as the fierce wind repeatedly carried her birds out of bounds. Once again, Oakley lost to Graham. "I went down in defeat with a score of 3336," she recalled. Still, despite the storm, the gate receipts covered the two hundred dollars she lost.

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