1. Annie Oakley was not her real name.
The fifth of seven surviving children, Oakley was born Phoebe Ann Moses on August 13, 1860, in rural Darke County, Ohio. Although she became a Wild West folk hero, the sharpshooter spent her entire childhood in the Buckeye State. Called “Annie” by her sisters, she reportedly chose Oakley as her professional surname after the name of an Ohio town near her home.
2. Oakley proved an expert shot at a young age.
While her sisters played with dolls, Annie tagged along with her father as he hunted and trapped in the woods. From an early age, Annie showed an extraordinary talent for marksmanship. “I was eight years old when I made my first shot,” she later recalled, “and I still consider it one of the best shots I ever made.” Steadying her father’s old muzzle-loading rifle on a porch rail, she picked off a squirrel sitting on a fence in her front yard with a head shot, allowing its meat to be preserved. The young girl’s shooting not only put food on the table, it eventually allowed her mother to pay off the $200 mortgage on the family house through the money Annie earned by selling the game she hunted to a local grocery store that supplied hotels and restaurants in Cincinnati.
