Perhaps you’ve heard it said, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Poverty and physical abuse are two things that will either make you or break you.

Annie Oakley

In the case of Phoebe Ann Moses, AKA, Annie Oakley, they made her a legend.

Born the sixth of seven children in 1860, Annie had a fairly happy home life in Ohio, until the death of her father when she was six. By all accounts, a compassionate child with wisdom beyond her years, little Annie thought it was her duty to help her mother all she could. Being the practical type, she picked up a rifle and learned to put food on the table.

But poverty was a steady stalker. In 1870, her mother, after being widowed a second time, made the desperate decision to send Annie and her sister to the Darke County Infirmary. Though she wasn’t there for long, Annie did get a little schooling, learned to sew, and helped take care of the younger orphan children. Unfortunately, however, her work ethic brought her to the attention of a local farm family. She was “bound out” to them for the promise of fifty cents a week and some education. She never saw either and the family worked her like a slave. Annie rose before daylight and went to bed well after dark. She did hard, heavy farm hand work as well as whatever other tasks the lady of the house felt like handing off.

Annie was physically and verbally abused, especially by the wife. In her memoirs, Annie referred to the family as “wolves”, but never named them. She was too classy for that. And perhaps she realized that, in an odd way, they’d done her a favor.

In ’72, Annie’s mother re-married and the family was re-united. Determined to stay out of the orphanage, Annie again picked up her gun and learned to shoot it with frightening, almost unnatural, accuracy. It was said she could shoot the head off a pheasant at over hundred yards and kill turkeys using her rifle instead of a shotgun. Patrons at the local restaurants appreciated the fact that they didn’t have to pick buckshot out of their white meat. The buzz on Annie’s uncanny skill with a gun spread. She soon regularly supplied several hotels and restaurants with fresh meat. The money paid off her mother’s farm by the time Annie was 15.

And, thus, it was this unflinching desire to never be hungry again (apologies, Scarlett) that set the course for our heroine to become an honest-to-God Western Legend.

Sharpshooter Frank Butler had the standing offer that he would shoot against any local from the towns where he was performing. Of course, all bets were welcome. Imagine Butler’s surprise when a Cincinnati hotel owner paraded five-foot-tall, pretty, petite little Annie out for the competition. She was barely taller than her rifle.

The two squared off and commenced to shooting. Butler missed on his 25^th shot. She didn’t. He lost the match, $100 to the hotel owner, and his heart to Annie. She and Butler would spend the next fifty-one years together, shooting in Wild West Shows, performing for ranch hands and royalty, and living a darn good life.

Best of all, Annie had the last laugh on that farm family from Ohio.

Copyright 2014 Heather Blanton

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