Read The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley Online

Authors: Glenda Riley

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

The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (35 page)

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bedridden and largely forgotten. Her exemplary life, he wrote, had established "a mark for any woman to shoot at." He suggested that people write to Annie in Dayton. Rogers's paean also marked changes in entertainment and media. As Annie's life faded, so did the era of shooters, vaudeville, circuses, and Wild West shows. Rogers used the growing power of the print media to revive Annie's former fame and glory.

As a result of Rogers's syndicated column, letters from fans deluged Oakley throughout the spring and summer of 1926. Many of them, in various ways, recognized Oakley's four major dimensions: entertainer, sport shooter, lady, and western woman. For instance, a Cleveland man remembered Oakley primarily as an entertainer. He had first seen her with the Wild West in 1897 or 1898 and thought the show a "wonderful whirl" and her a "trim little lady" who did not miss a single shot. Women too remembered Annie from the arena. A Florida woman who had seen Annie with the Wild West recalled her own "amazed delight'' in Annie's "wonderful handling of a rifle," for she herself was an ''indifferent but enthusiastic" shot at the time.

But people also remembered Oakley as a sport shooter. A Florida man reminisced that as a boy, he had put clay pigeons in a trap in a New York match where she, the only female competitor, captured first prize. "I always thought it a great honor to do that for you." Others noted Annie's skill at exhibitions and hunting, as did the New York man who had seen her shoot at Fred Stone's farm. "So many people love you and think of you," he wrote.

Others thought of Oakley primarily as a great lady. When a Washington, D.C., man sent her a necklace, he commented that it was not really good enough for "such a lady as you." As part of Annie's ladyhood, many people remarked on her beneficence. A New York woman reminded Annie that, just as she had once made so many less privileged people happy, she had the strength and "true values" to carry herself forward through her illness.

Many more thought of her as a western woman. A California man described himself as "an old Westerner" who first went west in 1881 and was one of her many fans. He too, he wrote, was nearing "the end of the trail"; he liked to let his memory wander to the "days of the old west" when he had "punched cows, mined

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in Idaho and followed the gold rush into Alaska in 1900" and lived as "full a life as possible" for anyone. And a California woman, born in a covered wagon in 1851 on the way west, never saw Annie in person but felt akin to Annie because they had both shared in "the era of the Wild West."

Yet other letters asked Annie questions, requested favors, or gave advice. One inquired if Annie remembered Lillian Smith, "quite a noted shot before your time." That must have tickled Annie, since Smith always claimed to be much younger than Oakley. Another writer even asked for Annie's prayers because he believed he was in more dire straits than she. Many of these letter writers recommended that Annie look on the bright side, think only good thoughts, pray, and read the Bible. Several others advised her to try Christian Science; another offered to give her a blood transfusion if she needed one.

Annie answered many of these letters, sometimes with information but more often with clippings. She especially liked to send copies of Dave's life story to her well-wishers because it summed up the family history after she left the public eye in 1913 as well as conveying her and Frank's values.

Sometime during the summer of 1926, Annie returned to Bonnie and Rush's farm near Ansonia, Ohio. Although Frank enjoyed only slightly better health than Annie, he hoped that he and Annie would be able to travel to North Carolina for the winter, but Annie urged him to go on without her. Although Frank too felt unwell, he headed south to please her. Frank went to New Jersey first, where in late August he attended a shooting match in Morristown. While there, he wrote to a friend that Annie was in poor health. He noted, "Doctors don't give me
much
hope." Frank added that he feared he and Annie could not afford Pinehurst that winter because the doctors' bills had "put a lump" in their bank account.

Because Frank did not feel well enough to go to Pinehurst on his own, either he or a friend wired Fern in Michigan for help. When Frank arrived at Fern's, she immediately realized that he was far too ill to travel south or even to return to Annie in Ohio. Fern put Frank to bed and took care of him, just as Annie had always asked should the necessity arise.

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Meanwhile, Annie's condition continued to worsen. She finally accepted the inevitably of imminent death and decided to prepare for it. In a letter she dictated to her nurse on September 11, 1926, Annie told a friend that the ordeal of her own and Frank's illnesses, which she believed caused mental instability in him, had nearly overwhelmed her. "I am just exausted [
sic
] and confined to my bed," she confided.

When Annie's doctor decided that her condition required his full-time supervision, Annie planned yet another move and began to distribute her prized possessions to family members and friends. In October 1926, an Indian pipe went to her nephew C. G. Moses of Kansas City, the son of her only brother, John Moses, now of McCurtain, Oklahoma. With the gift was a clipping showing Sitting Bull with the pipe in his hands and a letter saying that Frank was in Detroit and "in a bad condition both physical and mentaly [
sic
]." In addition, Annie gave C. G. and his brother, Lee Moses, each a cut-glass decanter and other crystal pieces given to her by the kaiser and kaiserin of Germany and divided between them a set of silver from Queen Victoria as well as photographs, newspaper clippings, and old advertising lithographs.

Annie's sister Hulda soon moved Annie to the Zemer and Broderick Home on 225 East Third Street in Greenville. According to Bess Edwards, Annie's grandniece, Annie still hoped to go south for the winter and thus had dresses fitted by the Zemer and Broderick sisters. During this time, Annie's doctor visited regularly, and Reverend Christian C. Wessel, pastor of the Lutheran Church of York township, called often and listened to Annie's longings for the "simple life," the days of her childhood as she now remembered them. Another caller was a woman embalmer, Louise Stocker, chosen by Annie because she wanted only a woman to handle her body. Sometime in late October, Annie gave Louise explicit instructions and showed her the dress she wanted to wear.

On Wednesday, November 3, 1926, at about 11
P.M.
, sixty-six-year-old Annie died in her sleep. Her doctor listed the cause of death as pernicious anemia, but some of her friends and family would later say that she had finally worn down and worn out; others believe the cause may have been something other than

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anemia, perhaps even lead poisoning induced by years of handling weapons and lead shot.

After Annie's death, Louise Stocker went to the house to pick up the apricot silk dress Annie had designated and then began to dress her. Louise put Annie's wispy hair in a chignon and patted some makeup on her withered face. On the morning of November 4, the news of her death went out over the Associated Press wire. The Darke County girl, Annie Oakley, "the friend of monarchs and the confidante of Sitting Bull," was dead.

On Friday, November 5, in the home of family friends Fred and Hazel Grote of Greenville, Reverend Wessel conducted a private ceremony. The Grotes had announced the service for Saturday but held it on Friday to thwart curiosity seekers and intrusive reporters. Annie's body lay on a bed, for she had instructed Stocker to send her body to Cincinnati for cremation. When the ashes came back in an urn, which Fern claimed was the silver loving cup that the French people had given Annie and that Annie had ordered fixed with a screw top, Fred Grote made an oak box for the urn and placed it in the vault at Stocker's Funeral Parlor until Frank joined her in death.

Annie's family began to disperse her remaining things according to her wishes. Annie's clothing, jewelry, and other personal items were to go to her three sistersEllen Grabfelder, Hulda Haines, and Emily Pattersonand to her niecesFern Campbell, Bonnie Blakeley, Irene Patterson, and some others. A paper-wrapped box went to Fred Stone at the Globe Theater. When he opened it, reportedly on stage, Stone discovered Annie's typewritten autobiography and a series of scrapbooks and pictures.

Newspapers announced that the rest of Annie's estate, mostly securities and real estate, had appraised at $42,448.68, which she left to family members. Annie had named Spencer S. Marsh, vice president of the National Newark and Essex Banking Company, and either William Longfellow or William Longfelder of Nutley as executors. Although the will itself reads William Longfellow, newspapers reported William Longfelder. Longfelder seems more likely because the Longfelders were longtime friends of Annie and Frank's from Nutley.

In the meantime, Frank, still at Fern's in Michigan, languished.

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Fern later said that Frank "never ate a bite" after he heard the news of Annie's death, but other family members believe that he was already too weak, or perhaps mentally disoriented, to fully absorb the news. Frank, at seventy-six years of age, died on November 21, eighteen days after Annie. In Fern's view, Frank died because of internal injuries she believed he had received in the 1922 accident in Florida and because "his heart was broken" after Annie died. Frank's death certificate simply listed senility as the cause.

On Thanksgiving Day 1926, Reverend Wessel officiated at the burial of Annie and Frank in the family plot at the Brock cemetery near Greenville, Ohio. Legend says that the box containing Annie's ashes lies in Frank's casket, but some family members believe it lies in her own grave. Both are marked with handsome red granite stones, one reading Annie Oakley and the other Frank E. Butler, each with the two simple words "At Rest," chosen by Annie.

Almost immediately, tributes to Annie began. Newspapers termed her remarkable, marvelous, and wonderful. One Annie would have especially appreciated came from the
Springfield Republican
; it described her as a "quiet, modest little figure" of a woman. Will Rogers penned one of the most extensive tributes. In 1927, he wrote that whenever he thought of that marvelous woman, Annie Oakley, he realized, "It's what you are and not what you are in, that makes you."

Annie's family and friends reminisced as well. Her nephew C. G. Moses told reporters that his aunt used to shoot pennies off his head when he was a boy. "I wasn't frightened. . . . She never missed." And William Longfelder's wife claimed when Annie had astonished her by doing somersaults around her living room after the 1922 accident and had talked about going into movies. Years later, in his 1945 autobiography
Rolling Stone
, Fred Stone recalled his amusement when he watched people meet Oakley for the first time. Although they expected a "big, masculine, blustering" woman, they got, much to their surprise, a "tiny woman with the quiet voice." Stone also told about the day, as he entertained friends by shooting down targets that Frank tossed into the air,

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when Annie asked if she could have his gun for a minute. With her snow-white hair and petite frame, she hoisted the gun to her shoulder and shot down all five targets that Frank had tossed up in a bunch. She returned the gun with thanks and turned to rejoin the other women making dinner in the house. As he watched her depart, one man wiped his brow and asked Stone, "My God, Fred, was that your mother?"

Dorothy Stone also had fond memories of Annie. During a 1950s interview at her home in Encino, California, Dorothy recalled the summers Annie had stayed with the Stones in Amityville, Long Island, summers when Annie taught Dorothy to shoot and gave her a gun with a gold plate on the stock inscribed "To Dorothy from Annie Oakley." Annie also gave Dorothy one of her saddles, complete with hand grips for stunt riding in Wild West shows and with the name "Annie Oakley" tooled in leather in the rise of the seat. Dorothy described Annie as a "sweet and retiring person" who never looked people in the eye while talking with them and made people uncomfortable by staring at the top of their heads or at their ears. Yet Dorothy added that "shy" Annie often closed her act with two rather dramatic actions: she ran and slid on her stomach to smash the last ball before it hit the ground, then she ran around the arena with her arms up in the air holding her rifle.

Shy in person and bold in public, Oakley was a study in contrasts. Yet it is not surprising that a person from humble beginnings who was also a woman living during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would be somewhat reserved. Given the expectations of her era regarding women, Oakley's ability to discard her reservations when she picked up a gun or mounted a horse is more surprising than her shyness.

Of course, Annie's death had a different impact on different generations of people. To older people, who had seen her in the Wild West or perhaps watched her shoot in a match or an exhibition, her passing seemed momentous and profound. But to younger people, who associated Annie with their parents' or grandparents' day, her death meant little. They were more wrapped up in listening to the 2.5 million radios in America; in worshiping

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