History Focus for August 13

History Focus for August 13

A short focus on a person or event associated with this day in History.

Anne Oakley -

hoebe Anne Oakley Moses was born in Darke County, Ohio, near the town of Patterson, on this day in 1860. She became the best-known markswoman the United States has ever produced. She amazed audiences for years with her proficiency at firearms. Even as a child she won local acclaim for marksmanship.

At age 15 she won a contest with marksman Frank E. Butler. She then became known nationally. She later married Frank E. Butler and toured vaudeville circuits and circuses with him until 1885. In that year they joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in which she was one of its star attractions for 17 years.

Her feats with a gun were amazing. From 30 paces (90 ft) she could hit the edge of a playing card, a dime tossed in the air (splitting the card in half,) or a cigarette held between her husband's lips. In 1901 a train wreck left her partially paralyzed, but she eventually recovered and continued to do shows for many more years. She died in Greenville, Ohio, on Nov. 3, 1926. Irving Berlin's musical 'Annie Get Your Gun', was based on her life. It was first staged on Broadway in 1946. It was made into a movie in 1950.

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Lucy Stone

ucy Stone was born on Aug. 13, 1818, in West Brookfield, Mass. A graduate of Oberlin College (in 1847), she became a lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In the 1850s she organized women's rights conventions. In 1869 she helped organize the American Woman Suffrage Association, an organization that sought state legislation to grant women the vote. At about the same time, the rival National Woman Suffrage Association was pressing instead for a constitutional amendment granting women new rights. The organizations merged in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

In 1855, she married the Ohio abolitionist Henry Blackwell. She kept her own name as a protest against the unequal laws that restricted married women. By the 1890s the term Lucy Stoner was used for any female crusader in the women's rights movement, na especially for a married woman who kept her own name as her surname. Stone was one of the first feminists in the United States.