Phoebe Moses, better known as Annie Oakley, world famous sharpshooter, was born in 1860 in rural
Darke County west of
Columbus on the Indiana border.
Oakley was an incredibly accurate shot with rifle and six-shooter, alike. At the age of 12 she shot the head off a running quail. At the age of 15, with her mother's farm about to be repossed, Oakley killed game for resale to restaurants in the county seat of Greenville. The money saved from this venture was enough to pay off the farm's mortgage. Sometime later, at the invitation of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, she shot the ashes off his mouth-held cigarette.
Oakley met her future husband, Frank Butler, himself a marksman, at a shootoff. Annie won and Butler was so impressed he struck up a relationship and they married in 1876. The Butlers joined the "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show" where Annie met and befriended Sitting Bull. He tagged the five-foot tall Oakley with the nickname "Little Sure Shot" which she used in her show billing.
