March 19, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Annie Oakley was a shooting star, a magician whose magic wand was a gun. Right-handed, left-handed, on a horse, through a mirror—she couldn’t miss. At a time when women were only expected to fire up the oven, Annie Oakley fired her way to fame as the world’s greatest sharpshooter. In her personal life, she was a sharpshooter as well. She was devoted to her marriage and her faith. Here to tell the story is Ashley Hlebinsky. Ashley is the former co-host of Discovery Channel’s “Master of Arms,” the former curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum, and president of The Gun Code, LLC.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Annie Oakley was
a shooting star, a magician whose magic wand was a
gun right handed, left handed on a horse through a
mirror he couldn't miss. At a time when women were
only expected to fire up the oven, Hannie Oakley fired
her way to fame as the world's greatest sharpshooter. In
(00:33):
her personal life, he was a sharpshooter as well. He
was devoted to her marriage and to her faith. Here
to tell the story is Ashley Libinski. Ashley is the
former co host of Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, the
former Curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum, and
President of the Gun Code LLC.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Here's Ashley, one of the most famous women in American history,
has become the subject of legend and speculation and adoration.
Annie Oakley, who is a famed marxwoman that lived in
(01:17):
the late nineteenth through the twentieth century, is known for
a lot of different colorful history, and she actually comes
from really humble beginnings.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
She was born Phoebe n Moses.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
In eighteen sixty in Dark County, Ohio, and pretty much
tragedy followed a lot of her younger life. Her father
passed away around the time she was eight, and as
a means to support her mother and her siblings, she
started hunting, and she would be so successful with the
hunting that at some point she would pay off her
(01:47):
mother's mortgage. So she definitely had a lot of skill,
even for a very young woman.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
But as she's doing this.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
There are a lot of other things that go on
in her life that aren't talked about, and one of
them is that she suffered from pretty extreme abuse when.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
She was a little bit older.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
In eighteen seventy, she and her sister were actually sent
off to go.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
To a school, and she was.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Kind of it's almost like indentured servitude without being indentured servitude.
She was basically put into this family so that she
could work and make money and that they would educate her.
It would have been great had those people not been
incredibly abusive and not really held up their end of
the bargain for the educational component. So fortunately, she was
reunited with her family years later, and she continued to
(02:35):
support the family through the means that she knew how
through hunting, and it's that sporting part of her life
that would ultimately make her famous, and the story goes
that in the eighteen seventies, although there are some people
that claim it could have been eighteen eighty one, when
she was fifteen years old, a famed marksman came into
her town and was basically challenging people all over the
(02:58):
country peacocking if you will, to try.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
To see if people could beat him. You know, he
was well known.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Everybody knew Frank Butler, and it's kind of ironic that
people knew Frank Butler then and now we don't really
remember Frank Butler.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
We only know Annie and partly because she won.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
As a teenager, she did accept the challenge and she
beat Frank Butler. And while you might think a lot
of men would be a little bit upset about that,
he found it very attractive and he ultimately courted her
and they got married about a year later, and they
started traveling together, and he already had a partner that
(03:35):
he was doing kind of shooting exhibitions with, and so
she started kind of traveling along there and she got
her start shooting with Frank. But she quickly got involved
with a man named William F. Cody that people tend
to know better as Buffalo Bill and Butler too was
a part of all of this, you know, kind of
(03:56):
world for Buffalo Bill's Wild West, and he did serve
as kind of her manager of sorts in addition to
continue being a world record setting shooter. And so they
decide that they're going to join the fanfare and the
real movement that becomes Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Now, if you're not familiar with that, it is what we.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Would call a wild West show, although it's important to
note that Buffalo Bill did not call His Wild West
ever a show, because he argued that it was a
specific reenactment of how the West truly was. And now,
they did do stagecoach scenes, they did do recreated different
military bottles, but obviously it was a little bit more
(04:37):
glamorized than it really was. But he also employed a
huge number of people that he traveled around the world with.
So Annie gets to basically see the entire world by
the time she's in her early twenties, and she makes
a name for herself doing a.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Lot of different things.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
She does shoot shotgun, which she's super well known for,
but she was a pistol shooter and she was also
a rifle shooter, and so the versatility of what she
did is really pretty impressive.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
One of the.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Things that she would do is she would ride a bicycle.
So she did do mounted shooting on a horse, but
she would actually ride a bicycle. She was really well
known for riding her bike everywhere. It was kind of
synonymous with her image, and so she would ride a
bicycle and use a shotgun or a smooth bore a
lever action rifle. A smooth bore lever action rifle is
kind of an oxymoron because it basically is a quote
(05:31):
unquote rifle that's been converted to not have any rifling,
so you can fire.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
A shotgun shot out of it.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
It's a little bit safer than using an actual projectile
when you are in an arena full of people. So
one of the things that she would do she would
do it on horseback. You also do in the bike
is that they would launch glass balls into the air
and she would shoot them out of the sky. And
this tape of fire arm was actually really important because
there's this great, potentially apocryphal story that the reason they
(06:00):
switched from solid bullets to shot with these iconic Western
firearms was that during a performance at an arena, they
actually the bullet went beyond the arena and broke a
greenhouse window.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Now we don't know if that's true.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
But it's not without the one, you know, outside the
realm of possibility. She also carried several revolvers with her
and did a lot of tricks with that, but really
some of the most impressive things.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
She did was with a.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Twenty two caliber, So that's a really small caliber lever
action rifle, so it's something that's specifically geared towards target shooting.
And one example that I'll give you is on March tenth,
eighteen ninety three, Annie put on a very memorable display
where she fired twenty five shots in twenty seven seconds
from this twenty two caliber lever action rifle, punching one
(06:50):
ragged hole.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
In the middle of an Ace of hearts.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
So pretty accurate and also awesome, and this kind of
became synonymous with getting into their performances that people would
basically have these playing cards and it was the Ace
of Hearts and it was almost like your free ticket
to the theater.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
So she was able to do speed, she was able.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
To do accuracy, and even though you might not be
familiar with all of the different firearms and weapons that
she utilized. You know, a lot of people know and
have seen the images of her holding a rifle backwards,
looking through a mirror, and splitting up playing card in
half at distance. She also snuffed out candles and did
(07:30):
a whole host of other things. But she wasn't without
some difficulties. Now you would think everybody loved Annie, and
they did for the most part, and nowadays she's basically
you know, her demure attitude or femininity. That's something that is,
you know, totally iconic to so many people. But what
people don't know is that even though she was all
(07:52):
these things wholesome, pure talented, there was a lot of
speculation about whether she was as good.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
As she was. And there's a meme that goes around
a lot of times.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
It's a photo of Annie Oakley and it says, when
a man hits a target, they call him a marksman.
When I hit a target, they call it a trick.
I never really liked that very much, so this is
shared everywhere by pretty much everyone. It's a great, you know,
statement on the talent of women maybe being subverted by
a male dominated culture. However, we don't think she actually
(08:24):
ever said that even though you know, don't believe everything
you read on memes. But there's no evidence that she
ever said that direct quote, although we do know from
an interview she did with The Rodden Gun and Country
House Chronicle that the interviewer said, you know, do people
ever insinuate that there is some trickery about your shooting?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Insinuate? She cried on.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
One occasion the audience became so persuaded that the targets
contained some explosive which broke them. As I fired that
they appointed a committee to investigate the matter. So she
might not have said that really kind of beautifully rounded
up quote, but she did know that people sometimes doubted
her abilities, and so much so that I haven't found
the evidence of the committee, but I believe her that
(09:08):
there was one.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
And we're listening to Ashley Libinski tell the remarkable story
of Annie Oakley, and when we come back, more of
Annie's life story here on our American Stories. And we
(09:39):
continue with our American Stories and the story of Annie Oakley.
Let's pick up with Ashley Libinski. Ashley is the former
co host of Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, the former
curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum and president
of the Gun Code LLC. Here's Ashley.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
The other thing that she ended a lot of conflict
was was there was another very talented shooter in the
Buffalo Bill circuit and her name was Lillian Smith. She
went by the California Huntress, as Annie Oakley went by
Annie Oakley.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
And Little Short Shop. And Lillian could not have been.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
More different than Annie Oakley. She was brash, she swore,
she wore quote unquote provocative clothing for the time, and
she was younger than Annie. And there's a lot of
speculation around the rivalry that they had, but there is
a belief that Annie did change her age because she
was eleven years Lillian Smith senior when Lillian Smith came
(10:37):
on to the stage with Buffalo Bill, and believe it
or not, Buffalo Bill really favored Lillian Smith, and the
media did too, And that's not to say they didn't
like Annie, but they really were fascinated by this different
type of woman that was also very skilled. And a
good example of that actually goes to a performance that
(10:58):
Annie Oakley and Lily Smith did in England. Basically, there
was a lot of double standards that were put onto
Annie and Lilian, and Annie really felt like the press
was kind of cruel to her when she saw Lillian
Smith as someone that was boastful, prideful, kind of too
out there. And one example that's really interesting was on
(11:20):
a tour of England, Oakley was actually vilified for shaking
the hand of Prince Edward's first wife. The funny thing
about that was the press kind of they were all
over it. How dare you that's so, you know, disrespectful.
Lillian Smith also shook her hand, and she received no
press on the subject matter, and the feud kept getting
worse and worse.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
And what some people may not know is that Annie.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Actually left Buffalo Bill's Wild West for a period of
time while Lili and Smith kind of continued on.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
She was tired of the.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Favoritism with Buffalo Bill and she she had had enough
for the time being, and she was talented she didn't
really need them to some extent, but she did have
some great time I'm s during that initial run. And
one of the things was she actually, well, this is
according to the story. It sounds mildly mortifying, but I
believe she could have done it.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
But she performed for.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Queen Victoria King am Bioto of Italy and then the
president of France, and the story goes that she allegedly
shot the ashes off of a cigarette held by the
newly crowned Kaiservillehelm the second which in some dark humor
you feel like maybe she could have missed and it
would have gone better for history, but she was too
(12:31):
good for that, and so if the story is true,
she definitely showed off her abilities for everyone. Annie Oakley
does ultimately go back to Buffalo Bill's Wild West and
she's a part of the performance until nineteen oh two.
For so many different reasons, Annie Oakley was really ahead
(12:52):
of her time, and throughout her life she would actually
be a fierce advocate for women's right to self defense.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
And there's a lot of.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Images and stories depicting Anniokly training women in shotguns and
target shooting and self defense, and it's believed that she
actually taught over fifteen thousand women during her lifetime. There's
images of her at different firearms clubs with you know,
lines of women learning how to shoot shotgun because according
to Annie, she said quote, I would like to see
(13:22):
every woman know how to handle guns as naturally as
they know how.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
To handle babies.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Now that might be controversial today, but it was certainly
something that she was trying to advocate for safety, and
that's something we should always remember that even though it
might not be something other people agree with in the
culture of the time, this was something that she believed
in and worked really hard to teach women to basically
take care of themselves in a time when that was
(13:49):
a very progressive concept.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
And I would say.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
It's fascinating too, because the firearms market really kind of
got behind her on that and were marketing to women
for self defense. They were marketing women to be target
shooters in their.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Own culture of the timeway.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
But she really believed that women should be strong, they
should be able to protect themselves, and she did so
to the point where she wanted women on the battlefield
and she believed that that's that they could do it,
and she supported it, even if the government wasn't ready
for that. She also tried to get women more involved
in the military, and the first time she did that
(14:25):
was she wrote to President McKinley and eighteen ninety eight
and she offered the government the services of fifty lady
sharpshooters who would provide their own arms and ammunition, which
is pretty imimpressive should the US go to war with Spain.
So we do know that the US did go to
war with Spain, the Spanish American War, but the name
that we associate with that war is Theodore Roosevelt and
(14:48):
his rough Riders, although Theodore Roosevelt was also a fan
of Antiokle.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
So her initial attempt to.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Get women on the battlefield was denied by the president,
and unfortunately that would come into play during World War
One where she would make a similar offer to have
women come and you know, be a part of the military,
and that was denied.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Once again.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
There's this kind of if you look at World War One,
World War II history with the involvement of women, a
lot of times women would work the communication lines during
World War One, and even by World War Two, when
women were actually a part of marksmanship units, that was
really downplayed and other parts of their roles were, you know,
what the government wanted to focus on. So she was
ahead of her time in that. But she made the
(15:31):
offers even though they were rejected, and she kind of
continues to set world records for the rest of her life.
But she is very much impacted by a train accident
in nineteen oh one where she is greatly injured. There
are a few other things that kind of happened around
this time period that weaken her ability to continue on
(15:52):
as a performer. She was actually locked in a public
bathhouse and almost died. And then the other one was
that people argued that perhaps, you know, being around so
much ammunition from that time period might have caused a
lot of lead poisoning, and so she was wearing wigs
towards the end.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
But one of the things.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
That I really like about the Annie Oakley story is
that she and Frank Butler truly loved each other till
the very end. You know, you've got a strong, successful
man and a strong successful woman who supported each other
throughout their whole lives, and they end up dying really
close together, which is kind of romantic when you think
about it. But since her passing, there have been so
(16:31):
many popular culture renderings of Annie Oakley Annie Gets Your Gun,
which is I haven't seen it in a long time,
but it definitely obfuscates a little bit of Annie's importance
in terms of the shooting competition, where she does let
a man win, but that you know, kind of took
off still popular today. There was a television series that
(16:52):
was called Annie Oakley, and nowadays it's kind of interesting because,
while you know, our culture is very divided about a
lot of firearms things, Annie Oakley is probably a name
that everybody knows, regardless of their involvement with firearms or
target shooting. And so she really did bridge that gap
between a male dominated community in the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
And then being someone that people did.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Respect and that she was a fierce advocate and that
that didn't hurt her reputation when she decided to fight
for women's rights. You know, she just was this wonderful
character in history that while there's a lot of legends
about who she was and what she did, and there's
a lot of in a mythology surrounding the image that
Annie poortrayed in the time period and how we kind
(17:37):
of see her today, she was truly a force to
be reckoned with, and we haven't really found other than
a rival we were with Lillian Smith, we hadn't really
found a lot bad about her. I think the only
thing you could possibly say is there's this crazy story
about basically she got accused by fifty five newspapers of
having a cocaine habit where she was, you know, seen
(17:59):
in Chicago trying to steal someone's pants, I think to
Selver cocaine, But nobody is going to do that to
Annie Oakley. And it was actually some woman who was
using her name with a different spelling, and she sued
all of those newspapers in one fifty four out of
fifty one of those trials. So perhaps it was her
fierce ability to stand up for her reputation and who
(18:21):
she was.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Why that's who we remember and not any.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Gossip that could have happened during the time period in
the papers.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hangler
and a special thanks to Ashley Levinski and she is
the co host of the former co host of the
Discovery Channel's Master of Arms and what a classic American
story of rising above your circumstance. Born Phoebe and Moses
in rural Ohio, her dad dies at the age of eight,
(18:49):
and she uses her shooting skills to feed the family,
and of course that leads to that epic challenge where
gunslinger Frank Butler comes to town and Annie eats him,
and interestingly, Frank finds that attractive and still to this day,
that's a quality that's sort of rare, but back in
the day almost impossible. Butler became her manager. There was
(19:13):
time at Buffalo Bill's Wild West. What Annie became known
for was not only her skill sets with a gun,
but her fierce advocacy for women's right to self defense.
She talked fifteen thousand women over her lifetime. As Lebinski said,
she wanted women to handle guns as confidently as they
handled babies. A true women's empowerment story. Annie Oakley story
(19:37):
here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. Annie Oakley was
a shooting star, a magician whose magic wand was a
gun right handed, left handed on a horse through a
mirror he couldn't miss. At a time when women were
only expected to fire up the oven, Hannie Oakley fired
her way to fame as the world's greatest sharpshooter. In
(00:33):
her personal life, he was a sharpshooter as well. He
was devoted to her marriage and to her faith. Here
to tell the story is Ashley Libinski. Ashley is the
former co host of Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, the
former Curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum, and
President of the Gun Code LLC.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Here's Ashley, one of the most famous women in American history,
has become the subject of legend and speculation and adoration.
Annie Oakley, who is a famed marxwoman that lived in
(01:17):
the late nineteenth through the twentieth century, is known for
a lot of different colorful history, and she actually comes
from really humble beginnings.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
She was born Phoebe n Moses.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
In eighteen sixty in Dark County, Ohio, and pretty much
tragedy followed a lot of her younger life. Her father
passed away around the time she was eight, and as
a means to support her mother and her siblings, she
started hunting, and she would be so successful with the
hunting that at some point she would pay off her
(01:47):
mother's mortgage. So she definitely had a lot of skill,
even for a very young woman.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
But as she's doing this.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
There are a lot of other things that go on
in her life that aren't talked about, and one of
them is that she suffered from pretty extreme abuse when.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
She was a little bit older.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
In eighteen seventy, she and her sister were actually sent
off to go.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
To a school, and she was.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Kind of it's almost like indentured servitude without being indentured servitude.
She was basically put into this family so that she
could work and make money and that they would educate her.
It would have been great had those people not been
incredibly abusive and not really held up their end of
the bargain for the educational component. So fortunately, she was
reunited with her family years later, and she continued to
(02:35):
support the family through the means that she knew how
through hunting, and it's that sporting part of her life
that would ultimately make her famous, and the story goes
that in the eighteen seventies, although there are some people
that claim it could have been eighteen eighty one, when
she was fifteen years old, a famed marksman came into
her town and was basically challenging people all over the
(02:58):
country peacocking if you will, to try.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
To see if people could beat him. You know, he
was well known.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Everybody knew Frank Butler, and it's kind of ironic that
people knew Frank Butler then and now we don't really
remember Frank Butler.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
We only know Annie and partly because she won.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
As a teenager, she did accept the challenge and she
beat Frank Butler. And while you might think a lot
of men would be a little bit upset about that,
he found it very attractive and he ultimately courted her
and they got married about a year later, and they
started traveling together, and he already had a partner that
(03:35):
he was doing kind of shooting exhibitions with, and so
she started kind of traveling along there and she got
her start shooting with Frank. But she quickly got involved
with a man named William F. Cody that people tend
to know better as Buffalo Bill and Butler too was
a part of all of this, you know, kind of
(03:56):
world for Buffalo Bill's Wild West, and he did serve
as kind of her manager of sorts in addition to
continue being a world record setting shooter. And so they
decide that they're going to join the fanfare and the
real movement that becomes Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Now, if you're not familiar with that, it is what we.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Would call a wild West show, although it's important to
note that Buffalo Bill did not call His Wild West
ever a show, because he argued that it was a
specific reenactment of how the West truly was. And now,
they did do stagecoach scenes, they did do recreated different
military bottles, but obviously it was a little bit more
(04:37):
glamorized than it really was. But he also employed a
huge number of people that he traveled around the world with.
So Annie gets to basically see the entire world by
the time she's in her early twenties, and she makes
a name for herself doing a.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Lot of different things.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
She does shoot shotgun, which she's super well known for,
but she was a pistol shooter and she was also
a rifle shooter, and so the versatility of what she
did is really pretty impressive.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
One of the.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Things that she would do is she would ride a bicycle.
So she did do mounted shooting on a horse, but
she would actually ride a bicycle. She was really well
known for riding her bike everywhere. It was kind of
synonymous with her image, and so she would ride a
bicycle and use a shotgun or a smooth bore a
lever action rifle. A smooth bore lever action rifle is
kind of an oxymoron because it basically is a quote
(05:31):
unquote rifle that's been converted to not have any rifling,
so you can fire.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
A shotgun shot out of it.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
It's a little bit safer than using an actual projectile
when you are in an arena full of people. So
one of the things that she would do she would
do it on horseback. You also do in the bike
is that they would launch glass balls into the air
and she would shoot them out of the sky. And
this tape of fire arm was actually really important because
there's this great, potentially apocryphal story that the reason they
(06:00):
switched from solid bullets to shot with these iconic Western
firearms was that during a performance at an arena, they
actually the bullet went beyond the arena and broke a
greenhouse window.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Now we don't know if that's true.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
But it's not without the one, you know, outside the
realm of possibility. She also carried several revolvers with her
and did a lot of tricks with that, but really
some of the most impressive things.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
She did was with a.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Twenty two caliber, So that's a really small caliber lever
action rifle, so it's something that's specifically geared towards target shooting.
And one example that I'll give you is on March tenth,
eighteen ninety three, Annie put on a very memorable display
where she fired twenty five shots in twenty seven seconds
from this twenty two caliber lever action rifle, punching one
(06:50):
ragged hole.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
In the middle of an Ace of hearts.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
So pretty accurate and also awesome, and this kind of
became synonymous with getting into their performances that people would
basically have these playing cards and it was the Ace
of Hearts and it was almost like your free ticket
to the theater.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
So she was able to do speed, she was able.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
To do accuracy, and even though you might not be
familiar with all of the different firearms and weapons that
she utilized. You know, a lot of people know and
have seen the images of her holding a rifle backwards,
looking through a mirror, and splitting up playing card in
half at distance. She also snuffed out candles and did
(07:30):
a whole host of other things. But she wasn't without
some difficulties. Now you would think everybody loved Annie, and
they did for the most part, and nowadays she's basically
you know, her demure attitude or femininity. That's something that is,
you know, totally iconic to so many people. But what
people don't know is that even though she was all
(07:52):
these things wholesome, pure talented, there was a lot of
speculation about whether she was as good.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
As she was. And there's a meme that goes around
a lot of times.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
It's a photo of Annie Oakley and it says, when
a man hits a target, they call him a marksman.
When I hit a target, they call it a trick.
I never really liked that very much, so this is
shared everywhere by pretty much everyone. It's a great, you know,
statement on the talent of women maybe being subverted by
a male dominated culture. However, we don't think she actually
(08:24):
ever said that even though you know, don't believe everything
you read on memes. But there's no evidence that she
ever said that direct quote, although we do know from
an interview she did with The Rodden Gun and Country
House Chronicle that the interviewer said, you know, do people
ever insinuate that there is some trickery about your shooting?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Insinuate? She cried on.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
One occasion the audience became so persuaded that the targets
contained some explosive which broke them. As I fired that
they appointed a committee to investigate the matter. So she
might not have said that really kind of beautifully rounded
up quote, but she did know that people sometimes doubted
her abilities, and so much so that I haven't found
the evidence of the committee, but I believe her that
(09:08):
there was one.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
And we're listening to Ashley Libinski tell the remarkable story
of Annie Oakley, and when we come back, more of
Annie's life story here on our American Stories. And we
(09:39):
continue with our American Stories and the story of Annie Oakley.
Let's pick up with Ashley Libinski. Ashley is the former
co host of Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, the former
curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum and president
of the Gun Code LLC. Here's Ashley.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
The other thing that she ended a lot of conflict
was was there was another very talented shooter in the
Buffalo Bill circuit and her name was Lillian Smith. She
went by the California Huntress, as Annie Oakley went by
Annie Oakley.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
And Little Short Shop. And Lillian could not have been.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
More different than Annie Oakley. She was brash, she swore,
she wore quote unquote provocative clothing for the time, and
she was younger than Annie. And there's a lot of
speculation around the rivalry that they had, but there is
a belief that Annie did change her age because she
was eleven years Lillian Smith senior when Lillian Smith came
(10:37):
on to the stage with Buffalo Bill, and believe it
or not, Buffalo Bill really favored Lillian Smith, and the
media did too, And that's not to say they didn't
like Annie, but they really were fascinated by this different
type of woman that was also very skilled. And a
good example of that actually goes to a performance that
(10:58):
Annie Oakley and Lily Smith did in England. Basically, there
was a lot of double standards that were put onto
Annie and Lilian, and Annie really felt like the press
was kind of cruel to her when she saw Lillian
Smith as someone that was boastful, prideful, kind of too
out there. And one example that's really interesting was on
(11:20):
a tour of England, Oakley was actually vilified for shaking
the hand of Prince Edward's first wife. The funny thing
about that was the press kind of they were all
over it. How dare you that's so, you know, disrespectful.
Lillian Smith also shook her hand, and she received no
press on the subject matter, and the feud kept getting
worse and worse.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
And what some people may not know is that Annie.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Actually left Buffalo Bill's Wild West for a period of
time while Lili and Smith kind of continued on.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
She was tired of the.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Favoritism with Buffalo Bill and she she had had enough
for the time being, and she was talented she didn't
really need them to some extent, but she did have
some great time I'm s during that initial run. And
one of the things was she actually, well, this is
according to the story. It sounds mildly mortifying, but I
believe she could have done it.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
But she performed for.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Queen Victoria King am Bioto of Italy and then the
president of France, and the story goes that she allegedly
shot the ashes off of a cigarette held by the
newly crowned Kaiservillehelm the second which in some dark humor
you feel like maybe she could have missed and it
would have gone better for history, but she was too
(12:31):
good for that, and so if the story is true,
she definitely showed off her abilities for everyone. Annie Oakley
does ultimately go back to Buffalo Bill's Wild West and
she's a part of the performance until nineteen oh two.
For so many different reasons, Annie Oakley was really ahead
(12:52):
of her time, and throughout her life she would actually
be a fierce advocate for women's right to self defense.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
And there's a lot of.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Images and stories depicting Anniokly training women in shotguns and
target shooting and self defense, and it's believed that she
actually taught over fifteen thousand women during her lifetime. There's
images of her at different firearms clubs with you know,
lines of women learning how to shoot shotgun because according
to Annie, she said quote, I would like to see
(13:22):
every woman know how to handle guns as naturally as
they know how.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
To handle babies.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Now that might be controversial today, but it was certainly
something that she was trying to advocate for safety, and
that's something we should always remember that even though it
might not be something other people agree with in the
culture of the time, this was something that she believed
in and worked really hard to teach women to basically
take care of themselves in a time when that was
(13:49):
a very progressive concept.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
And I would say.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
It's fascinating too, because the firearms market really kind of
got behind her on that and were marketing to women
for self defense. They were marketing women to be target
shooters in their.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Own culture of the timeway.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
But she really believed that women should be strong, they
should be able to protect themselves, and she did so
to the point where she wanted women on the battlefield
and she believed that that's that they could do it,
and she supported it, even if the government wasn't ready
for that. She also tried to get women more involved
in the military, and the first time she did that
(14:25):
was she wrote to President McKinley and eighteen ninety eight
and she offered the government the services of fifty lady
sharpshooters who would provide their own arms and ammunition, which
is pretty imimpressive should the US go to war with Spain.
So we do know that the US did go to
war with Spain, the Spanish American War, but the name
that we associate with that war is Theodore Roosevelt and
(14:48):
his rough Riders, although Theodore Roosevelt was also a fan
of Antiokle.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
So her initial attempt to.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Get women on the battlefield was denied by the president,
and unfortunately that would come into play during World War
One where she would make a similar offer to have
women come and you know, be a part of the military,
and that was denied.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Once again.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
There's this kind of if you look at World War One,
World War II history with the involvement of women, a
lot of times women would work the communication lines during
World War One, and even by World War Two, when
women were actually a part of marksmanship units, that was
really downplayed and other parts of their roles were, you know,
what the government wanted to focus on. So she was
ahead of her time in that. But she made the
(15:31):
offers even though they were rejected, and she kind of
continues to set world records for the rest of her life.
But she is very much impacted by a train accident
in nineteen oh one where she is greatly injured. There
are a few other things that kind of happened around
this time period that weaken her ability to continue on
(15:52):
as a performer. She was actually locked in a public
bathhouse and almost died. And then the other one was
that people argued that perhaps, you know, being around so
much ammunition from that time period might have caused a
lot of lead poisoning, and so she was wearing wigs
towards the end.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
But one of the things.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
That I really like about the Annie Oakley story is
that she and Frank Butler truly loved each other till
the very end. You know, you've got a strong, successful
man and a strong successful woman who supported each other
throughout their whole lives, and they end up dying really
close together, which is kind of romantic when you think
about it. But since her passing, there have been so
(16:31):
many popular culture renderings of Annie Oakley Annie Gets Your Gun,
which is I haven't seen it in a long time,
but it definitely obfuscates a little bit of Annie's importance
in terms of the shooting competition, where she does let
a man win, but that you know, kind of took
off still popular today. There was a television series that
(16:52):
was called Annie Oakley, and nowadays it's kind of interesting because,
while you know, our culture is very divided about a
lot of firearms things, Annie Oakley is probably a name
that everybody knows, regardless of their involvement with firearms or
target shooting. And so she really did bridge that gap
between a male dominated community in the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
And then being someone that people did.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Respect and that she was a fierce advocate and that
that didn't hurt her reputation when she decided to fight
for women's rights. You know, she just was this wonderful
character in history that while there's a lot of legends
about who she was and what she did, and there's
a lot of in a mythology surrounding the image that
Annie poortrayed in the time period and how we kind
(17:37):
of see her today, she was truly a force to
be reckoned with, and we haven't really found other than
a rival we were with Lillian Smith, we hadn't really
found a lot bad about her. I think the only
thing you could possibly say is there's this crazy story
about basically she got accused by fifty five newspapers of
having a cocaine habit where she was, you know, seen
(17:59):
in Chicago trying to steal someone's pants, I think to
Selver cocaine, But nobody is going to do that to
Annie Oakley. And it was actually some woman who was
using her name with a different spelling, and she sued
all of those newspapers in one fifty four out of
fifty one of those trials. So perhaps it was her
fierce ability to stand up for her reputation and who
(18:21):
she was.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Why that's who we remember and not any.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Gossip that could have happened during the time period in
the papers.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hangler
and a special thanks to Ashley Levinski and she is
the co host of the former co host of the
Discovery Channel's Master of Arms and what a classic American
story of rising above your circumstance. Born Phoebe and Moses
in rural Ohio, her dad dies at the age of eight,
(18:49):
and she uses her shooting skills to feed the family,
and of course that leads to that epic challenge where
gunslinger Frank Butler comes to town and Annie eats him,
and interestingly, Frank finds that attractive and still to this day,
that's a quality that's sort of rare, but back in
the day almost impossible. Butler became her manager. There was
(19:13):
time at Buffalo Bill's Wild West. What Annie became known
for was not only her skill sets with a gun,
but her fierce advocacy for women's right to self defense.
She talked fifteen thousand women over her lifetime. As Lebinski said,
she wanted women to handle guns as confidently as they
handled babies. A true women's empowerment story. Annie Oakley story
(19:37):
here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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