Phoebe Ann Mosey

Phoebe Ann Mosey(Annie Oakley) began hunting at age nine to support her siblings and her widowed mother. She sold the hunting game for money to locals in Greenville, as well as restaurants and hotels in southern Ohio. Her skill eventually paid off the mortgage on her mother's farm when she was 15.

During the spring of 1881, the Baughman and Butler shooting act was being performed in Cincinnati. Traveling show marksman and former dog trainer Francis E. Butler (1850–1926), an Irish immigrant , placed a $100 bet per side (roughly equivalent to modern US$2,000) with Cincinnati hotel owner Jack Frost, that Butler, age 31, could beat any local fancy shooter. The hotelier arranged a shooting match with Oakley, age 21, to be held in ten days in a small town near Greenville, Ohio. After missing his 25th shot, Butler lost the match and the bet — a serendipitous irony that led him to become a well-known winner in backstage life. Butler began courting Oakley, and they married on June 20, 1882.

Oakley and Butler lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, for a time, and she is believed to have taken her stage name from the city's neighborhood of Oakley, where they resided. At first, Oakley was Butler's assistant in his travelling show. Later, Butler realized that Oakley was more talented and unusual, so he became her assistant and business manager. Their personal and business success in handling celebrity is considered a model show business relationship even after more than a century.

Her health declined in 1925 and she died of pernicious anemia in Greenville, Ohio at the age of sixty-six in 1926. She was buried in Brock Cemetery in Greenville, Ohio. Frank Butler was so crushed by her death that he stopped eating. He died just 18 days later.

After her death it was discovered that her entire fortune had been spent on her family and her charities.