Cincinnati, Ohio

Thanksgiving Day, 1875

Frank Butler was a professional trick shooter who showed off his skill in traveling stage shows.  When a $100 prize was offered to the winner of a shooting match, he was confident the money would soon be his—especially since he’d be shooting against a pint-sized 15-year-old girl. 

     Young Phoebe Ann Mosely, known as Annie, had been hunting game to feed her family for years.   $100 was a fabulous sum, and she was determined to win it.  The two competitors took turns firing 25 shots each.  Annie hit the target 25 times.  Frank missed his last shot.  He lost the match, and his heart in the bargain.  “I was a beaten man the moment she appeared,” Frank later said, “for I was taken off guard.”

     A gracious loser, he gave Annie’s family tickets to his show.  Soon he was courting her.  An Irish charmer, older than Annie by ten years, Frank had been married before and fathered two children, but he was a kind man with no bad habits, so Annie’s mother gave her blessing.  The couple was married August 23, 1876 (a date later given as 1882, perhaps because of Annie’s age or because Frank may not have been legally divorced at the time).   

     A  man with a poetic soul, Frank would write of his wife, “Her presence would remind you/Of an angel in the skies, /And you bet I love this little girl/With the rain drops in her eyes.”   

     In the early years of their marriage, Frank performed with a male partner.  On May 1, 1882, his partner took sick.  Annie had to go on stage to hold the targets.  Frank wasn’t having his best night.  When, after some misses, the audience clamored to “let the girl shoot,” Annie gave a spectacular exhibition.  Soon the team was performing as Butler and Oakley.  But Frank soon realized that Annie was the real star of the act.  Some husbands wouldn’t have taken kindly to having a celebrity wife.  But as Annie’s fame grew, Frank became her manager, handling finance, bookings and promotions.  It was a happy partnership that would last for the rest of their lives. 

     In 1885 the pair joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, touring and performing with them for 16 years.  Annie Oakley became one of the most famous women in the world.  But in private life she was always Mrs. Frank Butler.  

In 1901, after suffering injuries in a train wreck, they left the show to rest and recover.  Frank took a job as a representative for the Union Metallic Cartridge Company.  They continued to tour and perform on their own, finally retiring in 1913.   Even then they did charity work, raising funds during World War I.  In 1922 Annie was planning a comeback when both of them were seriously injured in an auto accident.  Annie never fully recovered her health.   On November 3, 1926, at the age of 66, she passed away.    After 50 years of marriage, Frank was unable to go on living without his Annie.  He stopped eating and died 18 days later, on November 21. 

     Can you think of other couples who’ve had inspiring love stories?  My own mom and dad come to mind.  They were married sweethearts for 63 years.  I like to think they’re still together somewhere. 

Clicking on one of the small books below will take you to Amazon.com.  My new story, THE BORROWED BRIDE will be available November 1.

I had planned to blog about superstitions today but I came across an image that so captured the essence of the heroine in my next book, WILD 3, it redirected my focus. This image of my mountain woman, Maggie (aka Mad Mag), reminded me of why I truly love writing westerns. One of my main draws is the freedom to create heroines who had to be as rugged and daring as their heroes. The women who settled the west were as hard-working, adventurous and courageous as their men folk–even more so by my account, as many were also rearing children amid establishing a home, working the land, tending stock and training a husband

History is bursting with dynamic western heroine inspiration.  Here are a few of my favorites:

• Cattle Kate - Ellen Liddy Watson, the first woman lynched by vigilantes in Wyoming. She was a widow who worked hard to build her own herd and purchase her own homestead. She was lynched by a rival cattle baren along the Sweetwater River, Wyoming, in 1889, during the height of the Wyoming range wars. 
• Elizabeth Simpson Bradshaw - A widow, with five children, the youngest only 6 years of age, walked across the American prairie pushing all her family possessions in a handmade, wooden handcart. After much tribulation, more than could ever be told, Elizabeth, with all of her children still alive, arrived at her destination, the Salt Lake Valley. There in the West she made her home, reared her children, and is honored by her posterity.
• Mary Fields - Born a slave in Tennessee in 1832, this tall, powerfully built woman was ambitious, daring and liked a good fight. With no formal education, she forged her way to Ohio and on to the Montana Territory. Declaring herself the protector of the Ursuline nuns at St. Peter’s Catholic Mission near Cascade,Montana, Mary defended those she loved from predators on two legs as well as four. She delivered the mail by stagecoach, never missing a day until she was almost 80 years old.
• Margaret Borland Heffenan - By 1873 she owned a herd of more than 10,000 cattle. She was said to be the only woman known to have led a cattle drive.
• Cathay Williams - Female Buffalo Soldier. When Congress passed an act authorizing the establishment of the first all Black units of the military, later to become known as “Buffalo Soldiers”, Cathay Williams, a former slave, decided it was time to join the Army. In November of 1866 she enlisted in the 38th US Infantry as William Cathay. Since there were little or no medical exams required, Cathay was able to successfully (at least initially), pull off this disguise.
• Calamity Jane -  ”Heroine of the plains” was born Martha Jane Canary. A wandering American frontierswoman, she dressed like a man and was even a pony express rider. She frequented bars, telling stories of her adventures with other “personalities” of the west during the mid to late 1800’s.
• Pearl Hart - First Known Female Stage Robber In Arizona Territory After being captured for the stage robbery, she said that she “would never consent to be tried under a law she or her sex had no voice in making, or to which a woman had no power under the law to give her consent.” She had become a strident voice for “women’s emancipation.”
• Nellie Cashman - “The Angel of Tombstone”  Pretty as a Victorian cameo and, when necessary, tougher than two-penny nails, the extraordinary Nellie Cashman wandered frontier mining camps of the 1800s seeking gold, silver and a way to help others. A lifelong, devout Catholic, Nellie convinced the owners of the Crystal Palace Saloon (one of whom was Wyatt Earp) to allow Sunday church services there until she had helped raise enough funds for construction of the Sacred Heart Church. She was also active raising money for the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, the Miner’s Hospital and amateur theatricals staged in Tombstone. She was famous for taking up collections to help those who had been injured or fallen on hard times, especially miners.

Many of these women remind me of my grandmothers–both ventured westward at a young age with little more than a suitcase and their sheer rugged will to build a better life for their families–both are wild west women in their own right and a basis of inspiration for all my heroines.

Do you have any favorite wild west heroines, either legendary, fictional or personal inspirations? For fun, what is the name of the heroine in the book you’re reading now?

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“I wanted to be the first to view a country on which the eyes of a white man had never gazed and to follow the course of rivers that run through a new land.” ~ Jedediah Smith

At the age of 22, Jedediah Smith signed on with the expedition of General William Ashley to travel to the Upper Missouri and trap beaver. On his second expedition he was attacked by a grizzly bear. The bear came out of the thicket and mauled Smith violently, throwing him to the ground, smashing his ribs and literally ripping off his scalp. When the attack was over, the scalp was hanging on to his head by an ear. Smith instructed Jim Clyman to sew it back on. Clyman did the best he could, but thought nothing could be done for the severed ear. Smith calmly insisted that he do his best to stitch it back on. After only TWO WEEKS of rest, he resumed his job as leader of the group and led his men–and become known for his comb-over hair style.

In his lifetime, Smith would travel more extensively in unknown territory than any other single mountain man. He traveled in the central Rockies, then down to Arizona, across the Mojave Desert and into California making him the first American to travel overland to California through the southwest. In a most amazing journey, he also came back from California across the desert of the Great Basin. The heat became so unbearable Smith and his men had to bury themselves in sand to keep cool. His expeditions and overland routes are said to have connected America, as the railroad later would for those who didn’t care to walk

 

Unfortunately he did not get the chance to publish his journals but he was a man who felt accomplished in life. “I started into the mountains, with the determination of becoming a first-rate hunter, of making myself thoroughly acquainted with the character and habits of the Indians, of tracing out the sources of the Columbia River and following it to its mouth; and of making the whole profitable to me, and I have perfectly succeeded.”

Hope you enjoyed this glimpse of Jed Smith. One of the things I find fascinating about him was the influence reading had on his life. As a writer, reading has definitely had great influence on my life and my passion to become a writer. My American History college course really fueled my interest in the American West, but it was the first western romance novel I read, FORGIVING by LaVeryl Spencer, that had the greastest impact on my budding interest in becoming a writer of western romance. Can you recall something you’ve read that had a profound impact on your life’s journey?  

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing piques my interest quite like outlaw legends, and there is something about the polite outlaw and his misguided morals that truly tugs at the heartstrings   When that legend is local—even better!  Black Bart (Charles E. Boles) was one of the most unusual stagecoach robbers in American history. There is no record of Bart every firing a shot in any of his 29 robberies.

On July 26, 1875 the Sonora to Milton stage in Calaveras County was robbed by a man wearing a flour sack over his head with two holes cut out for the eyes. The stage driver said he carried a double-barreled shotgun and wore a long linen duster and sacks on his boots as well, to hide his garb. His voice was resonant and deep and he only said, “Please throw down the box!” He was polite and used no foul language. These became the trademarks of Black Bart, who went on to stage 29 robberies. He never robbed the passengers—only taking Well’s Fargo strong boxes.

Why is he called the Poetic bandit?  He would leave behind poems for the authorities to find while searching the area.  The first poem was left tacked on a tree in 1875:

“I’ve labored long and hard for bread
for honor and for riches
But on my corns too long youve tred
You fine haired sons of Bitches
Black Bart
the PO 8
Driver, give my respects to our friend, the other driver;
but I really had a notion to hang my old disguise hat on his weather eye.
Respectfully, B.B.”

Some interesting facts: He wrote to his wife from Silver Bow, Montana in August of 1871 about a bad experience with men who worked for Wells, Fargo & Co. and swore to get back what was his…. He headed for the gold fields of California. Not much for horses he walked almost everywhere he went. Having marched 20+ miles a day with the Union army and living in the open air, California suited him nicely. Some legends have him teaching school. His wife assumed him dead when he stopped writing. Four years later he staged his first “polite” robbery. The item that led to his capture was a handkerchief accidentally left behind at his 29^th robbery. Authorities traced 91 San Francisco laundries to find that the handkerchief belonged to Charles E. Bolton, a respectable mine engineer who was staying at Room 40, 37 2nd Street, San Francisco. Hume had him arrested and in his report recorded that Black Bart was, “A person of great endurance. Exhibited genuine wit under most trying circumstances (THAT is something to be admired in anyone ). Extremely proper and polite in behavior, eschews profanity.”

Bart was sentenced to six years in San Quentin Prison.  He was released after serving four on account of his good behavior

**Added Info: Black Bart’s last robbery was November 3, 1883, on the very same mountain pass as his first heist. After eight successful years as the “polite bandit”, Black Bart was fifty-four years old at the time of his capture. After his release from prison he lived in San Francisco for about a year and then disappeared. In the last letter to his wife he said he was tired of being demoralized by Wells Fargo and he wanted to get away from everyone. Wells Fargo officials traced him to a hotel in Visalia and found his valise in his room–but no Black Bart. His valise contained a can of corned beef, crackers and a hankerchief - I believe there’s a poetic messesge delivered in that

Butch Cassidy is another outlaw legend who fascinates me–I believe Elizabeth did a post on him not long ago.  Doc Holiday is another favorite romantic legend that comes to mind.  Did you know that both of Doc Holiday’s parents died at age 37–his mother dying of tuberculosis.  Tuberculosis took Doc at the age of 36.  After proclaiming he would not die in bed….he died in bed.  His last words: “Now isn’t this funny…”  His tombstone reads “He died in bed.”

How about the rest of y’all?  Have any favorite western or outlaw legends?