The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (41 page)

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Authors: Glenda Riley

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

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Page 234
Today, Annie Oakley lives in the world's memory as a westerner, but one who clung to ladyhood. Consequently, both her own and current generations can welcome Annie Oakley into their hearts without censure or regret.
How much of this was happenstance and social milieu and how much Oakley's personal choice? Certainly happenstance and milieu dictated many of the options available to Annie. As a woman, a Quaker, and an Ohioan, she was not likely to become a hard-bitten, rough-riding buffalo hunter or Indian scout. Still, Oakley exercised a great deal of agency in endeavors accessible to her. Annie especially demonstrated her will as an entertainer and sport shooter; here she smashed barriers holding back women. At the same time she more or less accepted two prevailing social judgments of the timethe ideal attributes of ladies and of westerners. But, while accepting them, she also turned them to her advantage; she enhanced her image and appeal by acting like a lady and a western women.
Thus, Oakley chose to break bounds in some areas while adopting them in others. She fought for goals important to herearning a living as a shooter and participating in sportsat the same time she adopted, and used, such prevailing concepts of the time as ladyhood and the mythic West.
Because Annie successfully combined her talent with such beliefs, she appealed to virtually everyone. Rather than being like the irrepressible and infamous Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley was more like Maria Martinez, a western potter who strove for beauty and accuracy, like Amelia Bloomer, a western reformer who worked to improve the lot of women, and like Mary Austin, a western writer who desired justice for Native Americans. In addition, Annie had the stage presence and appeal of Jenny Lind, a Swedish singer who toured the United States, the honesty of Sarah Winnemucca, a Paiute woman who revealed the truth even if unpleasant, and the generosity of Mary Ellen Pleasant, a California entrepreneur and philanthropist. If Annie had negative traits as well, they simply made her human.
Today, Oakley continues to have widespread appeal. A century

 

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after her prime, the United States is a more mature, responsible nation than during the 1890s. Yet the 1990s bear many similarities to Annie's times. The "good old days" of family farms and simple virtues are fast fading. In their place are stock market scandals, racial riots, tabloid journalism, exposé talk shows, AIDS, a soaring divorce rate, global warfare, and a plethora of other social problems. Today, Annie Oakley still embodies largely middle-class values and standards, including hard work, honesty, and humility, which numerous Americans believe in and hope to restore.
Oakley is thus part of a larger phenomenon; she personifies the longing of a nation to return to certain elements of its past, a past characterized by the Old West. The West endures because it is a useful and attractive part of Americans' collective past, a part characterized by many successes and associated with virtues many people think of as peculiarly American. For those Americans who continue to demonstrate a fascination with the positive side of the Old West, Oakley provides a fitting symbol.
Because the Old West cannot survive when stripped of its heroes, Oakley is an extremely important figure of the enduring West. She allows people to return without guilt or remorse to the days of the Old Wild West. One can condemn aspects of the conquest of the West without rejecting Annie or her compelling achievements and qualities.
In truth, Annie Oakley became a westerner by affinity rather than by birth, and she created a model western woman. As a result, she has become a western heroine for all timeshe has proven as enduring as the West itself.

 

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Note on Sources
Because Annie Oakley had little sense of her own historical significance, she kept few of her letters and personal documents. The two best sources for Annie Oakley's words and memories are Annie Oakley, ''Autobiography," undated, copy in possession of the author, and Annie Oakley,
Powders I Have Used
(Wilmington: Du Pont Powder Company, 1914). In addition, Annie and Frank compiled invaluable scrapbooks of newspaper clippings. The originals are held by the Buffalo Bill Historical Society in Cody, Wyoming, along with documents, ephemera, vertical files, and artifacts. Copies of the scrapbooks are available at the Western History Collection of the Public Library in Denver, Colorado.
Several of Oakley's letters as well as Frank Butler, "The Life of Dave," Bess Lindsey Walcholz, "Annie Oakley," 1909, and Hazel Moses Robertson, "Moses Memories," 1989, are held by the Annie Oakley Foundation in Greenville, Ohio (also copies in the author's possession). Other of Oakley's letters are in the Oakley Collection at the Nutley Historical Society in Nutley, New Jersey.
Such people as Irene Patterson Black (a niece), Beatrice Blakeley Hunt (a grandniece), and Lela Border Hollinger (a neighbor) have shared many useful and interesting memories of Annie. Notes from interviews, all conducted in January 1993, with these women are held by the author.
Biographers offer a variety of interpretations of Annie Oakley's life and career. Clifford Lindsey Alderman,
Annie Oakley and the World of Her Time
(New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1979), analyzes Oakley in the context of her own era. Oakley's first biographer, Courtney Ryley Cooper,
Annie Oakley: Woman at Arms
(New York: Duffield, 1927), combines facts and legend to present a picture of an achieving, successful woman. Edmund Collier,
The Story of Annie Oakley
(New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1956), gives young readers a fictionalized account that lionizes Oakley as a child of the frontier. Shannon Garst,
Annie Oakley
(New York: Julian Messner, 1958), Jan Gleiter and Kathleen Thompson,
Annie Oakley: Great Tales
(Nashville: Ideals Publishing Corp., 1985), Ellen Wilson,
Annie Oakley: Little Sure Shot
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), and Charles P. Graves,
Annie Oakley: The Shooting Star
(Champaign, Ill.: Garrard, 1961), after fictionalized accounts for young readers and characterize Oakley as a young woman

 

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with true grit. More recently, Robert Quackenbush,
Who's That Girl with the Gun? A Story of Annie Oakley
(New York: Prentice-Hall Books for Young Readers, 1988), also ties Oakley to the frontier. Ellen Levine,
Ready, Aim, Fire! The Real Adventures of Annie Oakley
(New York: Scholastic, 1989), interprets Oakley as a courageous, achieving woman, an admirable role model for girls of the late twentieth century. Oakley's niece Annie Fern Campbell Swartwout,
Missie: An Historical Biography of Annie Oakley
(Blanchester, Ohio: Brown Publishing Co., 1947), incorporates many legends into her account and is best when offering her personal recollections of Annie and Frank. Walter Havighurst,
Annie Oakley of the Wild West
(New York: Macmillan, 1954), presents a fictionalized, highly readable account that is generally accurate. Tom Tierney,
Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill: Paper Dolls in Full Color
(New York: Dover Publications, 1991), reproduces some of the clothing Annie wore.
More thoroughly researched statements are found in Isabelle S. Sayers:
The Rifle Queen: Annie Oakley
(Ostrander, Ohio: N.p., 1973) and
Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill's Wild West
(New York: Dover Publications, 1981). The most recent biography, and one that makes extensive use of the Oakley scrapbooks, is Shirl Kasper,
Annie Oakley
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992).
In addition, a variety of popular articles interpret Oakley in differing ways: Peter P. Carney, "Greatest of Modern Dianas" (n.p., n.d., copy in author's possession); Louise Cheney, "Annie Oakley, Little Miss Sureshot,"
Real West
10 (November 1967): 5357; special issue on "Annie Oakley and the Wild West,"
Cobblestone Magazine
, 12, no. 1 (January 1991); Patricia Croft, "Highlights of Annie Oakley,''
Winchester Repeater
1 (Fall 1984): 3738; "Annie Oakley" in Stewart H. Holbrook,
Little Annie Oakley and Other Rugged People
(New York: Macmillan Co., 1948); R. Douglas Hurt, ''Annie Oakley: An Enduring Western Legend,"
True West
36 (July 1989): 1419; and Mark Taylor, "Annie Oakley: A Shooting Legend,"
American Rifleman
131 (December 1983): 4446, 6869. In addition, Oakley's years in North Carolina are discussed in Claude R. Flory, "Annie Oakley in the South,"
North Carolina Historical Review
43, no. 3 (1966): 33343; her relationship with Frank is analyzed in Tracy C. Davis, "Annie Oakley and Her Ideal Husband of No Importance," in Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach, eds.,
Critical Theory and Performance
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 229312, and "Shotgun Wedlock: Annie Oakley's Power Politics in the Wild West," in Lawrence Senelick, Ed.,
Gender in Performance: The Presentation of Difference in the Performing Arts
(Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1992), 14157.
Although seemingly without factual base, a possible underside to Oakley's life is suggested in a novel by Marcie Heidish,
The Secret of

 

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Annie Oakley
(New York: New American Library, 1983). The theme of childhood abuse marks Heidish's novel, as she has remarked that it does her own life and other of her works. Annie's supposed hatred of guns and aversion to hunting is posed in Jim Blair, "The Torment of Annie Oakley,"
Elks Magazine
, 1981, 68, 2931, 34.
The dime novel series (eight titles) that appears to be about Annie Oakley is best illustrated by Prentiss Ingraham,
Buffalo Bill's Girl Pard
(New York: Street and Smith, 1980).
Articles comparing Annie Oakley with later women shooters are James Cranbrook, "America's Prettiest Shotgunner,"
Guns
2 (March 1956): 1618, 39, and K. D. Curtis, "Can Women Outshoot Men?"
Guns
1 (July 1955): 1418, 5354.
An understanding of early Darke County can be gained from
History of Darke County
(Chicago: W. H. Beers and Co., 1880),
A Biographical History of Darke County
(Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1900), and Frazer E. Wilson,
History of Darke County
(Milford, Ohio: Hobart Publishing Co., 1914). The story of Nutley, New Jersey, and Oakley's time there is found in Ann A. Troy, ed.,
Nutley: Yesterday, Today
(Nutley: Nutley Historical Society, 1961).
Details of Annie Oakley's lawsuits against William Randolph Hearst's newspaper can be found in
The Federal Reporter
(St. Paul: Westwood Publishing Co., 19069).
An overview of mid- and late-nineteenth-century show business and shooting can be found in the following: Jack Burton,
In Memoriam: Oldtime Show Biz
(New York: Vantage Press, 1965); Joseph Durso,
Madison Square Garden: 100 Years of History
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979); Douglas Gilbert,
American Vaudeville: Its Life and Times
(New York: Whittlesey House, 1940); John and Alice Durant,
Pictorial History of the American Circus
(New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1957); Jaroslav Lugs,
A History of Shooting
(Felthma, Middlesex, England: Spring Books, 1968); and Robert C. Toll,
On with the Show: The First Century of Show Business in America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). Especially useful are the Amon Carter Museum and Don Russell,
The Wild West; or, A History of the Wild West Shows
(Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, 1970), and the Wild West posters in the Western History Collection, Denver Public Library.
Early rodeos and cowgirls are analyzed in the following: Kathryn Derry, "Corsets and Broncs: The Wild West Show Cowgirl, 18901920,"
Colorado Heritage
(Summer 1992), 216; Kristine Fredriksson,
American Rodeo: From Buffalo Bill to Big Business
(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985); Teresa Jordan,
Cowgirls: Women of the American West
(1982; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991); Mary Lou LeCompte,
Cowgirls of the Rodeo: Pioneer

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