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Discovering
Ohio...
Annie
Oakley’s hometown in the Wild West (of Ohio)
I grew up
thinking that Annie Oakley came from the Wild West. I didn’t realize
she came
from the wilds of western Ohio until we spotted a small sign pointing
to her
gravesite along a two-lane highway near Greenville.
We recently
re-visited Oakley’s gravesite and saw the largest known collection of
Oakley
artifacts at the Garst Museum.
Oakley
gained fame traveling the country as the sharpshooting star attraction
of
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Born Phoebe
Ann Mosey at North Star in Darke County Ohio in 1860, she experienced
extreme
poverty as a child, especially after her father died in 1866.
She used
her father’s old rifle to hunt local game to feed her family and sell
meat to
help pay off the mortgage on the family farm.
In 1875,
she won a shooting contest in Cincinnati, meeting marksman Frank Butler
in the
process. The couple eventually married and Butler, recognizing his
wife’s
superior shooting skill, became her manager and assistant as she took
the stage
name of Annie Oakley.
Oakley and
Butler died within weeks of each other in 1926. When we first saw their
side-by-side graves in Brock Cemetery more than a decade ago, there was
just a
small sign marking the site. We saw the Ohio state historical marker,
erected
in 2003, during our most recent visit.
Darke
County goes all out to celebrate its “Little Sure Shot” during its
Annie Oakley
Days Celebration July 27-29 in downtown Greenville and at the Darke
County
Fairgrounds.
While
learning about Ohio’s Annie Oakley connection was fascinating, there
was a lot
more to learn about the area at Greenville’s Garst Museum.
The Garst
family donated their home to the Darke County Historical Society as a
museum in
1946. Today, it is a complex with over 35,000 square feet of display
space and
more than 300,000 artifacts.
Other
notable collections at the Garst include: military uniforms and
artifacts
dating from the War of 1812 through the present; a gallery dedicated to
broadcaster and world traveler Lowell Thomas, who deftly used the “new
media”
of his day like radio, films and television to bring the world to
American
theaters and living rooms during the mid-20th century; and the
Crossroads of
Destiny exhibit.
Crossroads
of Destiny is a permanent exhibit tracing events leading up to the
signing of
the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which paved the way for America’s
westward
expansion.
Greenville
was home to one of the largest stockade forts ever built in the
country, a
50-acre Army camp from 1793 until 1796 and site of the treaty signing
involving
12 Native American nations and the United States.
Many of the
1,000 artifacts in the Crossroads of Destiny exhibit came from area
archeological digs funded by the museum.
Hungry
after a morning of cemetery and museum exploring?
Deanna York
of the Darke County Visitors Bureau suggests catching a bite at Michael
Anthony’s at the Inn, The Bistro Of Broadway or the Made-rite Sandwich
Shoppe,
continuing your Greenville explorations at the Bear’s Mill or the
KitchenAid
Experience Retail and Factory Tour, or capping your trip with a visit
to the
Winery at Versailles.
Photos and
dozens of links, plus other articles, at Discovering
Ohio
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