The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (6 page)

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Authors: Glenda Riley

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

BOOK: The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley
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standard of living. And, as often as she tried, she could never sacrifice the excitement of a life lived in many different locales.
Whatever the correct date of their shooting match and subsequent wedding, it is clear that Annie made a dramatic life choice when she agreed to marry Frank. Although men had not proved stable figures in her girlhood, she entrusted her future to a man. Perhaps Annie saw Frank as the reliable, long-lived father she had never experienced, or possibly Annie already recognized that she was capable and willing to carry a great deal of responsibility for her own livelihood. In addition, Annie separated herself from the women of her family, whom she could now visit only at intervals. Here her childhood experiences stood her in good stead; she had already learned how to succor herself from only intermittent times at home.
In marrying Frank, Annie also repressed her own fear of poverty. Clearly, Frank and Annie owned little when they married. According to one story, Frank brought fifteen hundred dollars in debts to the marriage. If true, neither Frank nor Annie mentioned the fact. To improve their financial situation, Frank continued to play on the stage while Annie reportedly stayed home with Susan or, according to another version, attended school in Pennsylvania, where she studied reading and writing to improve her still-inadequate skills, a lack that would bother her the rest of her life. In 1881, Frank joined the Sells Brothers Circus, where, according to a poster, he appeared along with "sixty tons of animal actors, a whole herd of learned elephants, and a caravan of educated camels." The following year he returned to the stage.
On May 1, 1882, Frank and his partner were scheduled to appear in the Crystal Hall in Springfield, Ohio. When Frank's partner fell ill before the performance, Frank, or perhaps Annie, suggested that she assist him during the act. "I went on," Annie explained, "with Mr. B. to hold the objects as he shot, [so] he thought. But I rebelled." She insisted on taking every other shot. That inaugural performance led to their touring the vaudeville circuit. In private life, Annie used the name Butler, but when she joined Frank on the stage, she chose Oakley as her professional name. She may have simply picked out a name with a firm ring. Like her choice of Frank as a husband, her choice of a name

 

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proved fortunate. "Annie Oakley" provided a solid base on which to build a career. And that is just what Phoebe Ann(ie) Mosey Moses Mozee Butler Oakley proceeded to do.
"Our first act," she recalled, "received a generous reception." Frank shot first, then Annie. To win over the audience, she often missed on her first try, then succeeded on the second shot. George worked with them; he jumped on a table and leaned his head against a target. After Frank placed an apple on George's head, either he or Annie split the apple with a bullet. George caught a piece of the apple in his mouth and walked toward the footlights, grabbing his share of the applause.
Annie soon began to design and sew her own costumes, a habit that continued throughout her career. She fashioned an ankle-length dress and leggings of durable cloth. She wore her chestnut hair loose, flowing down her back. Standing only five feet tall and weighing about 110 pounds, she must have created doubts in many people's minds. But when she hefted a rifle or a shotgun to her shoulder, she soon answered all questions regarding her competency. The shotgun itself may have been what Annie called her "first gun of quality," an 1878 Parker Brothers sixteen-gauge double-barrel, breech-loading hammer-mode shotgun. Weighing more than seven pounds, this gun featured a beautifully burled walnut stock, Damascus steel barrels, and delicate engravings, including several ducks and pheasants, on the lock plates.
Annie remembered those early days with fondness. She loved Frank, who, with great patience, helped her improve her reading and writing skills, develop new tricks, and refine her stage presence. She loved George, who traveled with them in railroad cars, bunked with them in theatrical boardinghouses, and walked at her side. And Annie loved the extra money that meant gloves, stockings, and pretty hair ribbons as well as savings in the bank. Even this early in her career, Annie showed how important money in the bank was to her.
In the background always stood Susan. Annie and Frank visited Susan between engagements. According to Annie's niece Fern, Annie seldom forgot Susan at paycheck time. And although Annie was now on the stage, she never surrendered the Quaker and family values of her mother. She refused to dress in a risque

 

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fashion, to wear makeup, or to use tricks to enhance her shooting. Frank always backed Annie in this area; he too believed in such traditional values as honesty and hard work. He frequently revealed his homespun philosophy in the sentimental poetry he wrote. In one poem, written on May 9, 1881, and bearing the notation "written . . . by her loving husband" (which also throws into question an 1882 marriage date), Frank called Annie a "charming little girl" with "rain drops in her eyes.'' Another poem, one of the most revealing of his inner self, Frank titled "What a Little Bird Said."
Don't waste your brightest hours
Pining for things beyond your reach;
Live up to the golden rule
And practice what you preach.
Life is like a game of cards
In which we pass our stand;
Sometimes the stake is a true heart
Oft time it's but a hand.
Sometimes we take in the trick
Which we should have past;
But if you play your cards for all they're worth
You're bound to win at last.
Given Annie's and Frank's homely values, the world of vaudeville and stock companies must have sorely tried their forbearance. After the Civil War ended in 1865, audiences increasingly called for more drama, more variety, and the exposure of more skin. As early as 1868, Lydia Thompson and the British Blondes thrilled Americans with their ample, tights-clad figures. Two years later, Mme. Rentz's Female Minstrels and numerous imitators presented the first widely viewed girlie shows in the United States. By the 1880s, female burlesque troupes toured regularly.
During the early 1880s, vaudeville star and producer Tony Pastor fought back. Intent on offering "clean" entertainment in "Tony Pastor's New Fourteenth Street Theater" in New York, he presented on October 24, 1881, the first variety show ever staged in the United States. He appealed to "high-brow" women by giving away dress patterns and sewing kits. Although Pastor's competition demeaned his bid for business, they underestimated the appeal of his show. A mixed audience of

 

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"ladies and gents" not only attended his offerings but provided him with steady patronage.
Butler and Oakley tried to avoid the seamier shows and to work for Tony Pastor when possible. Annie and Frank agreed that the world of "blue" vaudeville was not their world. They preferred something that appealed to family audiences and reinforced traditional values. Thus, a circus atmosphere must have seemed ideal. Certainly, Annie would have heard about circuses that criss-crossed Ohio during the 1860s and 1870s. Perhaps her brother, John, even joined the boys who rose at sunup to see the elephant herded into line for the circus parade and who then hurried back to the show ground to ride the horses to water, thereby earning their admission to the show.
Between the 1840s and the 1880s, circuses, thanks largely to railroads, provided a portable, affordable family show throughout the Midwest. These circuses also earned huge profits. For example, in 1881, Adam Forepaugh netted $240,000 and a year later $260,000. To keep ahead of the competition, Forepaugh's agents plastered his show's posters on everything from fences to public buildings to barns, often papering over a competitor's bill.
But competitors continued to challenge Forepaugh. In 1881, Phineas T. Barnum and James A. Bailey introduced the three-ring circus, soon forcing Forepaugh and others to follow suit. In 1883, Forepaugh tried to trump Barnum and Bailey by claiming that his elephant, Bolivar, outweighed Barnum's elephant, Jumbo, although Jumbo, who weighed six and one-half tons, held the title as the world's heaviest elephant. About the same time, the Sells Brothers introduced an "$18,000 Herd of Six Performing Colorado Cattle, the Only Ones Ever Educated and Exhibited in the Ring." Then, in 1884, Barnum and Bailey purchased a rare white elephant, which flopped with audiences because it was actually gray-white. Forepaugh, who despite his appeal to family audiences and family values was not above occasional chicanery to keep his show on the road, had one of his elephants secretly whitewashed. Forepaugh billed it as a genuine sacred white elephant "proved by the highest scientific authority" and called Barnum's elephant a fraud.
These circuses also routinely featured shooting acts. In a day

 

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when numerous people carried guns for protection or hunting or both, many wanted to see what the "experts" could do with weapons. In addition, theater audiences had long appreciated "western" plays about Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, and vaudeville audiences expected every bill to include at least one trick shooter. Then, in September 1874, the newly formed National Rifle Association's Creedmoor range on Long Island provided the site for the American Rifle Team's upset victory over the world-renowned Irish shooters, further sharpening Americans' interest in shooting. The next few years witnessed a variety of shooters, ranging from John Ruth, who in 1879 broke nearly one thousand glass balls at a county fair in Oakland, California, to Captain Frank Howe, who in the early 1880s attired himself in boots, a leopard-skin jacket, and a sombrero and worked with a female partner, the beautiful Miss Russell, who dressed in tights but knew little about shooting. As a result, circus-goers presumed that shooters would occupy at least one of the rings during a circus performance.
In these halcyon days of the circus, Frank and Annie joined a circus company. In 1884, they signed a forty-week contract with the Sells Brothers Circus. Sometime after they reported to the home of the Sells Brothers in mid-April 1884, the idea seized Annie of simultaneously riding horseback and shooting. Although she had to keep the loads in her guns small and her shots low to avoid damaging the "big top," she delighted audiences and began earning a relatively large salary.
The four Sells brothers of Dublin, Ohio, just north of Columbus, had organized their first show in 1871. By 1884, they ran a successful and typical circus. Adam Forepaugh and Barnum and Bailey notwithstanding, the Sells Brothers advertised their troupe as "the greatest array of arenic talent." Their own railroad cars transported fifty cages of live animals, including a $57,000 pair of hippopotamuses, a $22,000 two-horned rhinoceros, a $50,000 aquarium of amphibious "monsters," a gigantic elephant named Emperor, and a huge giraffe. In addition, the company included the Chinese dwarf Chemah, the bicycling Stirk family, horseback rider James Robinson, equestrienne Adelaide Cordona, "lofty leaper" Frank Gardner, and "champion rifle shots" Butler and Oakley.

 

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