On this day in 1860, folk heroine Annie Oakley was born in a log cabin in Illinois. By age 8 she was demonstrating her extraordinary sharp-shooting skills, and at age 15 she began a long career as a star of Wild West shows, most famously Buffalo Bill’s traveling show, touring America and Europe and creating a sensation everywhere she went with her shooting skills. It is said that she made more money than any other performer in the shows (Sitting Bull included), except Buffalo Bill himself. By the 1890s she was an international star. In 1882, at age 22 she married Frank Butler, a fellow marksman who she met when she was 15 years old (and he was still a married man). In her later years, she became a champion of women’s rights, and was still performing and demonstrating her astonishing shooting skills in the 1920’s. She died in November 1926 at the age of 66, and is buried alongside her husband in Greenville Ohio. Today we commemorate her birthday, and the legend she left behind as one of the first female stars of the 19th century.
