The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (22 page)

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Authors: Glenda Riley

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

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Even neighbors' boys and girls benefited from Annie's love of children. Lela Border Hollinger recalls that whenever Annie came to Greenville, she visited the Hollingers, who occupied the farm next to Susan's home. Annie usually shot holes in dimes to amuse Lela and gave her dollar bills, which Lela now wishes she had saved rather than immediately spending.
Like generations before them, most Americans also believed that a real lady was not only married but domestic as well. Never did Annie Oakley even hint that shooting should replace domestic endeavors in her life, or in the lives of other women, partly because she must have recognized the criticism that such a suggestion would bring and partly because she sincerely believed in the value of domestic work. Even when urging women to take up biking, shooting, and other forms of exercise, Oakley warned them not to slight their domestic cares. In 1899, she emphasized that it was not her intention to cause a woman to "neglect her home duties." Rather, Annie argued that time for both work and play should exist in every woman's life.
Given her peripatetic life, Annie did her best to put her own advice into effect. When a
New York World
reporter visited her apartment across from Madison Square Garden in 1887, he found it littered with shotguns, rifles, and revolvers, with gold and silver trophies covering the mantel piece and every tabletop. Annie herself stood in the small kitchen area, making tea and toasting muffins as serenely as any other housewife of the day.
Annie also exhibited mastery with the needle, a skill she learned as a girl when she worked at the Darke County Infirmary. She made most of her own costumes and cared for all of them so meticulously that some members of her family thought her overly particular and even touchy, liable to an occasional flare-up. But as a true lady, Annie could do as she pleased; the rules of domesticity supported her own inclinations. Her perfectionism might have annoyed those around her, but Annie could always justify her habits as ultimate domesticity.
Clearly, Annie carried her fastidiousness to an extreme. According to her niece Fern, Annie would never wear anything in less than perfect condition. "She never minded wearing the oldest

 

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clothes, if they had been made to look their best by either repairing or pressing.'' Fern added that Annie looked after Frank's clothing in the same finicky way. In her spare moments, Annie also pursued her love of fancy needlework, especially embroidery. Between shows, she regularly sat in a rocking chair in her tent, embroidery hoop in hand, producing a huge stock of exquisite linens.
Unfortunately, Annie lacked a permanent home in which to display her domestic talents. Still, she turned every boardinghouse and hotel room, every tent, and every apartment into a home. She filled each with flowers, medals, gifts, and visitors, and when in one place for a period of time, she surrounded her current dwelling with beds of flowers that she cultivated herself. She also kept wine and such delicacies as ices and jelly cakes available for her and Frank's frequent guests. In 1893, one of these described her tent as "beautifully decorated" with a red brussels carpet, lounges, couches, rocking chairs, and satin pillows. Yet another praised her as "an accomplished housewife" because of the "neat and cheery appearance of her tent."
Despite the limitations of her tent, Annie proved herself an adept hostess. In 1887, a guest noted that Annie reigned within her flower-filled tent, holding a "sort of informal reception." She answered visitors' questions and told stories gracefully and graciously. Two years later, another commented that in her tent, Oakley "held a regular court where everybody paid homagejournalists of all nations, statesmen of all nations, soldiers of all nations." In 1892, Annie even successfully "entertained at tea" in her tent the count and countess de Paris, the duke of Orleans, and another unnamed prince. Frequently, however, entertaining seemed to be more of a matter of business and public relations to Annie than warm hospitality for personal friends.
Annie admitted as much. As early as 1889, she said she cared little for the show life and did it purely as a matter of business. If she had a choice, she would prefer a home in the country. Then in 1892, Oakley told an English reporter she was weary of moving about and wanted to settle down. That very year, Annie and Frank began building a handsome, three-story home with double porches and a five-sided alcove topped by a conical tower. Located at what

 

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is today, 302 and 306 Grant Avenue in Nutley, New Jersey, it reportedly cost nine thousand dollars.
Lying roughly thirteen miles outside of New York City along the Passaic River, Nutley provided a country haven for writers, artists, and performers who, like Annie and Frank, needed proximity to the city. How the Butlers discovered Nutley remains unclear. Frank liked to joke that he found it when he got off a train at the wrong stop. Annie said they fell in love with the town when they happened to pass through. More realistically, they probably stabled horses, or even practiced Annie's act, at Eaton Stone's barn and stables north of town. Stone, the first circus performer to turn a somersault on a bareback horse and first to "ride" four horses by stepping from back to back, provided winter quarters for numerous showpeople.
Annie and Frank moved into their new house, which they sometimes called Oakley House, in December 1893. Both Annie and Frank made friends easily and were well accepted in Nutley. The Butlers joined the Nutley Rod and Gun Club, and Annie went sleighing with a group of young people. Annie and Frank also had many visitors, especially after Annie issued a blanket invitation to all friends and sportspeople to stop at her home. "They will find the latch string on the outside," she promised. It did not matter to her if guests shot a thirty-dollar or a three-hundred-dollar gun, but she hoped they would donate any specimen they had bagged themselves to her Sportsmen's Room, and she would put their name on it.
Among the first gifts was a huge stuffed owl that sat in state for nearly five years before moths attacked it. During the winter of 1899, Annie tied the owl to the roof to freeze out the moths. Although she tied it securely, its wings flapped in the wind and attracted attention. Local shooters broke windows and destroyed clothes hanging on the line by taking potshots at the bird, but the owl persevered. After the servants threatened to quit, Annie sent one of them out to remove the owl from its perch.
Sadly, home ownership failed to bring Annie the joy she had anticipated. The owl was the least of her problems. Perhaps because she had usually served as helper to her mother, Annie proved herself an indifferent cook. Because of her exacting na-

 

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ture, she lost not only hired cooks but seamstresses as well. She also felt ill at ease overseeing servants and preferred to leave managerial tasks to Frank, who had more experience and skill in giving directions, making requests, and initiating ideas.
According to Fern, Frank's brother always said that Annie and Frank had lived in a tent so many years that they no longer knew how to live in a house. In addition, Annie and Frank traveled so much that they had to either close up the house or rent it out while they were gone.
It is also likely that a large house, servants, and domestic management tried Annie on two fronts. She lost her usual tight control of her smaller and more manageable tent, hotel room, or apartment. Also, it became apparent that she lacked a crucial aspect of a lady's training; Annie had never been tutored in the art of handling servants. Annie's venture into home ownership and management may have proved to her that both her control and her ladyhood were more apparent than real and that she could best maintain the illusion of them on the road.
Finally, in 1904, Annie and Frank sold the Nutley house to Joseph Stirrat. (It was demolished in August 1937.) Next, the Butlers moved to the Pinehurst Hotel in New York City, overlooking Riverside Drive and the Hudson River. Annie spent the rest of her active career years until 1913 practicing her domestic skills in boardinghouse or hotel rooms, tents, or apartments. Although Frank sometimes longed to own a home once again, Annie tried to avoid it.
While living in Nutley, Annie publicly demonstrated that she possessed another crucial quality of a true ladybenevolence. In 1894, she agreed to take part in what one reporter described as "a mixture of circus, Wild West and indescribable feats by practiced amateurs." George H. Bayne and Frank E. Butler organized the Nutley circus, as residents called it, to be staged in March of that year in Eaton Stone's barn on Kingsland Road for the benefit of the Red Cross. Because Annie Oakley appeared on the bill, New York newspapers publicized the event and promised people that her performance alone would justify the one-dollar admission charge.
When the big night arrived, fifty electric lamps illuminated the

 

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barn, and red crosses adorned banners, programs, and even ten-cent bags of peanuts. While the local band played, the show began with a grand review; acrobats from the Orange and New York athletic clubs and the Newark Turnverein followed. Others who appeared included Henry Cuyler Bunner, editor of Puck magazine, as ringmaster; young Al Stirrat on his pony; E. L. Field, with a bear and a monkey; a Professor Donovan, boxing with Alpheus Geer; Charles Smith, as a tramp riding Molly, the hat factory's delivery horse; and, of course, Annie Oakley, as "America's Representative Lady Shot."
Normally, however, Annie preferred to pursue her charitable works with much less fanfare. Through the years, she sent her mother and other family members money, material for clothes, and a variety of other gifts. Annie also sent regular gifts to her numerous nieces, nephews, grandnieces, and grandnephews. In 1977, Bess Lindsey Wacholz, the oldest grandchild of John Moses, Annie's only brother, remembered that during her childhood, her "Aunt Annie" often sent gifts of material for school dresses along with twenty dollars for buttons, braid, and other trimmings. Some packages also included children's books and cards picturing Sitting Bull and other Wild West stars. During wintertime, mittens, bathrobes, and "long-handled underwear" arrived. By the time Bess reached high school, Annie's packages included fine soaps and delicately perfumed face powder as well as white organdy for a graduation dress and money for a class ring and pin. Bess added that her Aunt Annie also enclosed a note, which invariably ended, ''When you answer do not mention the money."
Frugal with herself, Oakley was seldom so with others. She wanted the best for her family and friends. In 1893, Annie ordered a dog collar for a hunting friend's pointer, Cyclone: "Get the finest and neatest collar to be had, regardless of cost." Annie also regularly contributed to local needs wherever she went. In 18691, for example, she sent a donation of two pound-notes (about ten dollars) to the Cardiff Infirmary while in Great Britain, and later her name turned up on the list of donors to the Keepers Benefit Society. When people asked Annie about her generosity, she would reply, "If I ever spend one dollar foolishly I see the tear-stained faces of little helpless children, beaten as I was."

 

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By the time Annie visited a Mrs. J. J. Sumpter, Jr., of Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1896, she was already well-known for her benevolent nature. The Hot Springs society column described Annie as "an accomplished and intellectual lady . . . known for her charity donations." Not surprisingly, many of Oakley's gifts went to children. According to Fern, Frank often said that Annie tried to ferret out all of the pathetic little waifs on the Wild West lot. In 1889, on location in Barcelona, Annie rescued a widow and her son Carlos from a mob of beggars to give them a basket of food, a practice she continued daily until she left the city.
In other cases, Annie sent gifts to her many namesakes. When a family in Spirit Lake, Iowa, named a daughter after her, Annie sent her a birthday gift for several years. In 1926, the womannow a mother herselfwrote to Annie assuring her that the presents had "helped very much" in making her childhood days "happy ones."
Oakley also tried to help orphans. During her first tour of Europe during the late 1880s, Annie gave her first charity exhibition, in this case for the Vienna Orphan Asylum. Other similar exhibitions soon followed. Annie also encouraged the Wild West's orphan day performances. In 1901, for example, Cody and Salsbury invited orphans "to come and smell powder smoke and see Indians and be happy." In 1909, Oakley characteristically sent a check equaling 10 percent of her winnings from a match held the previous day to the
Winston-Salem Journal
, asking the paper to give the money to the pregnant widow and orphans of a man killed in a mine accident. Annie also challenged the citizens of Winston-Salem to follow her example, so as to "place the grief-stricken little widow, as well as the little life soon to begin, beyond want for awhile."
In addition to children, Oakley assisted a number of young women with schooling costs. Testimony from Annie's friends and thank-you notes from the women themselves indicate that she may have helped as many as twenty women. Among these notes was a postcard from "Bessie," evidently Annie's grandniece Bess Lindsey Wacholz, indicating that Annie was helping her through nurses' training school. In another document, Bess mentioned that Annie had sent her a heavy coat, a Spanish shawl, and a pale

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