America’s First Female Superstar

Phoebe Ann Moses--do you recognize the name? Some sources cite her last name as Mosley. Phoebe was born on August 16th, 1860, in Ohio. She grew up in a poor family, and after her father died, she was sent to Darke County Infirmary in Ohio, where she was educated and taught to sew. At age ten, she was sent to work for a family who treated her cruelly. She called them “the wolves” and soon ran away and returned to her family. She helped support them by hunting game and selling it to a local shopkeeper. Her shooting skill grew quickly, and she was soon able to pay off her family’s mortgage.

Have you figured out who she is yet? 

Annie Oakley, the most skilled female shooter of the 19th century.

In 1875, when Annie was just 15, she stunned Frank Butler, an expert shootist and vaudeville performer, when she beat him in a Thanksgiving competition. Frank fell in love almost at first sight, and the next year, he and Annie married. A few years later, when Frank’s partner took ill, Annie replaced him, amazing audiences with her shooting skills. At that time, she adopted the stage name: Annie Oakley. They joined a vaudeville show, and Annie began making her own costumes--ones more modest than the risqué outfits the other females wore.

In 1884, Anne met Sitting Bull, the Sioux Indian chief. He was so impressed with her abilities that he dubbed her “Little Sure Shot.” In 1885, Annie joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and performed in the show for the next seventeen years. Annie dazzled audiences by shooting the flame off candles and corks out of bottles. She even shot off the end of a cigarette that her husband held in his teeth. Talk about trusting your wife! Annie could shoot distant targets while looking into a mirror, hit the edge of a playing card at 30 paces, and shoot holes in cards thrown into the air before they hit the ground. 

Annie toured Europe for three years and even met Queen Victoria. In 1901, Annie was injured in a railroad accident and partially paralyzed for a time, but she recovered and went on the star in a melodrama called The Western Girl. After she and Frank retired, Annie did exhibition work to raise money for orphan charities and the Red Cross. Annie died on November 3, 1926, and just eighteen days later, Frank joined her. Annie’s life was commemorated by the Irving Berlin musical, Annie Get Your Gun. She will always be known as America’s first woman superstar.

THE PRODIGAL'S SHOTGUN WEDDING

Vickie McDonough

A prodigal’s hope for a happy homecoming is derailed. Clay left home after his brother’s death—a death for which he was responsible. After years away he’s finally returning, hoping for reconciliation with his father. But when the stagecoach he’s riding in wrecks and he is injured, he finds himself in a fight for survival. Jolie is fleeing a nightmare situation. She desperately hopes becoming a mail-order bride doesn’t land her in a worse place. When the stage crashes and she spends the night alone with a wounded man, she wonders if her intended will still want her. If he doesn’t, what will she do? She has no money and nowhere to go.

Available on Amazon / Free KU

Vickie McDonough is the CBA, EPCA, and Amazon best-selling, award-winning author of 50 books and novellas.

And They Call the Thing Rodeo

By Cindy Regnier 

It’s bulls and blood
It’s dust and mud
It’s the roar of a Sunday crowd

At least that’s how Garth Brooks describes it and I guess I’d have to agree. Do you enjoy rodeo? Ever wonder how it got started? As one of my favorite sports (next to my alma mater football) I’ve always been interested in its beginnings. Let’s delve into it and see what we can find out.

You may be surprised to learn that rodeo is a little more complex than boots, cowboy hats and fancy belt buckles. Rodeo is actually a unique of blend of cultures and traditions with its roots in Spanish origin. Modern day rodeo in our country dates back to the cattle industry of the American West, but it was greatly influenced by Spanish conquistadors in the 1700s.

Today’s rodeo developed many of its practices from Spanish ranchers and their Mexican ranch hands, or vaqueros. The word “rodeo” itself is derived from the Spanish word “rodear” meaning “roundup,” in reference to the roundup of cattle. As pioneers from the East interacted with the Spanish, Mexican, Californian, and Texan cowboys, they took on many of the vaqueros’ styles and traditions of ranch life.

The blending of Anglo and Spanish-Mexican cultures led to the birth of the American cowboy era in the 1800s. Breaking horses to ride and catching cattle for branding, doctoring, and sale required roping and riding skills on the frontier ranches. In the 1820s and ’30s ranch-versus-ranch contests began to spring up with cowboys and vaqueros testing their skills against each other.

Branding

It wasn’t until after the Civil War, however, that the cowboy era truly began, as ranchers from the Southwest organized cattle drives to deliver cattle to trains where they would be transported East. At the end of a drive, cowboys would hold informal competitions against each other to see which group had the best skills in riding and roping. These events soon became competitions on for public display at race tracks, fairgrounds, and festivals.

Some folks believe the first official rodeo was held in 1869 in Deer Trail, Colorado, when two groups of cowboys from neighboring ranches met to settle an argument over who was best at performing everyday cowboy tasks, including breaking wild horses, which is today’s saddle bronc riding event. Over the years, a culmination of skills and techniques from Spanish-speaking cowboys, vaqueros, and cowboys from the East combined to bring us today’s modern rodeo. 

Many others claim to be the first rodeo in the U.S., including Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1872; Winfield, Kansas, in 1882; and Pecos, Texas, in 1883. Still, these early contests were primarily simple displays of riding and roping skills and not the organized events now standard in today’s rodeo industry.

From the 1880s through the 1920s, frontier days, stampedes, and cowboy contests were the most popular names of what we now call the rodeo. Buffalo Bill Cody 

Buffalo Bill

and his Fourth of July Wild West show in North Platte, Nebraska, in 1882 was the first competition to offer prize money, with Prescott, Arizona, claiming to hold the “first formalized rodeo” on July 4, 1888. From there, Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1897, the Pendleton Round-Up in 1910, and the Calgary Stampede in 1912 followed as popular rodeo venues.

Initially, rodeo was a fairly nondiscriminatory sport, often including Hispanic, African American, Native American, and female contestants in an era when race and gender discrimination were commonplace. Women competed in many events at mixed-gender rodeos well into the 1930s. During this time, ladies often competed against men and won in a variety of rodeo events, including bronc riding and steer roping, as well as trick and fancy roping and riding.

One of the more well-known female competitors was Phoebe Ann Moses Butler. Butler grew up in a poor family in Ohio, where she took up hunting to provide for her family after her father died. From those marksman skills developed as a hunter, she earned the nickname “Little Sure Shot” and joined Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show as Annie Oakley in 1885.

Annie Oakley

In 1929, two events occurred that changed the course of rodeo history:
1.Well-known cowgirl Bonnie McCarroll died in a bronc riding accident at Pendleton, Oregon, leading many rodeos to drop women’s contests.

Bonnie McCarroll

2.The Rodeo Association of America was formed by rodeo organizers, and not the cowboys themselves, to standardize rules, establish a point system, monitor judges, and establish fair prize money. In large part because of McCarroll’s death, the RAA was organized as an all-male entity.

1945 marks the year professional cowboys officially adopted the term “rodeo” for their sport. The PRCA went on to sanction the events and rules for saddle bronc riding, bareback riding, bull riding, calf roping, steer wrestling, team roping, and steer roping.

Women realized it would be up to them to get back into the mainstream of the sport and in 1948, the Girl’s Rodeo Association, now the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association (WPRA), was started by a group of Texas ranch women. The WPRA was highly successful in restoring cowgirl contests to PRCA rodeos. Barrel racing was the most popular WPRA contest, and it spread rapidly throughout the country. It is now the only women’s event standard at PRCA rodeos and often ranks second only to bull riding in popularity.

It’s boots and chaps
It’s cowboy hats
It’s spurs and latigo
It’s the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo

Rand Stafford isn't looking for true love. He'd ridden that trail leaving behind a shattered heart. He only needs a wife to help him care for his orphan nieces.
Fleeing her former employer, a newspaper advertisement reads like the perfect refuge to Carly Blair. Escaping the city to hide herself on a cattle ranch in Kansas is her best shot for freedom. But its sanctuary comes with a price—a husband. While marrying a man she doesn't know or love means sacrificing her dreams, it's better than being caught by the law. Or is it?

Buffalo Bill Vaudeville

By Tiffany Amber Stockton

Last month, I shared about the anniversary of the opening of the first public library in the United States. If you missed that post, you can read it here: http://www.hhhistory.com/2018/04/first-public-library-in-united-states.html.

Returning back to a more western setting...I've always loved cowboys, horses, and the "wild west." I've also always loved the idea of the state fairs, and I featured a snippet of both in my story for the Blue Ribbon Brides collection, Front Paige Love, only that one featured Doc Carver and his traveling stunt show with diving horses, which had its height during the late 1920's and Depression-era in the US.

* * * * *

From Real Life to Vaudeville Performance!

The year is 1883, and the month is May. Just 125 years ago. The inspiration began a few years earlier, though. William F. Cody was a real-life buffalo hunter, U.S. Army scout, and guide. In 1869, author Ned Buntline wrote a "dime novel" about Cody called Buffalo Bill, the King of Border Men, after the two met on a train from California to Nebraska. In December 1872, Buntline’s novel turned into a theatrical production and launched Cody's career in live performances.

Poster showing Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress
of Rough Riders of the World, c. 1898.

After traveling and performing with notable names like Wild Bill Hickok and Texas Jack in the Buffalo Bill Connection, Cody opened "Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show" on May 19, 1883 at Omaha, Nebraska. His partner that first season was a dentist and exhibition shooter, Dr. W.F. Carver. Cody and Carver took the show, subtitled “Rocky Mountain and Prairie Exhibition,” across the country to popular acclaim and favorable reviews, launching a genre of outdoor entertainment that thrived for three decades.

The birth of the Wild West as a successful genre was mostly a product of personality, dramatic acumen, and good timing. The golden age of outdoor shows began in the 1880s, and with his theatre experience, Buffalo Bill was already skilled in the use of the press and publicity. His fame and credibility as a westerner lent star appeal and a certain level of authenticity. Cody definitely gave the show a dramatic narrative structure. But it was the show's publicist, John Burke, who utilized innovating techniques at the time, such as celebrity endorsements, press kits, publicity stunts, op-ed articles, billboards, and product licensing, that contributed to the success and popularity of the show.

Features such as the Pony Express, the wagon train, or the attack on the stagecoach recreated specific and well-known events. Spectacles such as “cowboy fun” or the showcasing of American Indian life usually served as a prelude to a dramatic event, such as a battle scene. Skill acts such as sharp shooting (with pistol and rifle), wing shooting (with shotgun), roping, and riding not only showcased star performers, the show’s narration linked those skills to survival in the frontier West.

Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill (1885)

An orator boomed the script to the audience from an elevated platform in the arena. The circus band backed the action taking place in the arena with appropriate mood-setting music. The same skits and music later were easily adapted to film and television "Westerns." I'm sure I'm not the only one who has viewed some of those earlier westerns and considered them grossly exaggerated or quite "campy" in their presentations. (grins)

Some famous names came out of performing in Buffalo Bill's shows, or other similar ones at the time. Names like Will Rogers, Bill Picket, Buck Taylor, Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, Texas Rose, Chief Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, and Geronimo.

The logistics of the show were formidable. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West carried as many as five hundred cast and staff members, including twenty-five cowboys, a dozen cowgirls, and one hundred Indian men, women, and children. They all were fed three hot meals a day, cooked on twenty-foot-long ranges. The show generated its own electricity and staffed its own fire department. Performers lived in wall tents during long stands or slept in railroad sleeping cars when the show moved daily. Expenses were as high as $4,000 per day. That's equivalent to over $100,000 today!!

Circus great James A. Bailey, of Barnum & Bailey, joined Cody and Salsbury in 1895 and revolutionized their travel arrangements. The show was loaded onto two trains totaling fifty or more cars. Strings of flat cars could be linked together with ramps for loading wagons from the back forward. Besides performers and staff, the trains transported hundreds of show and draft horses and as many as thirty buffalo. The show carried grandstand seating for twenty thousand spectators along with the acres of canvas necessary to cover them. The arena itself remained open to the elements. Advance staff traveled ahead of the show to procure licenses and arrange for the ten to fifteen acres required for the show lot, preferably close to the railroad; to buy the tons of flour, meat, coffee, and other necessities; and to publicize and advertise.

In 1899, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West covered over 11,000 miles in 200 days giving 341 performances in 132 cities and towns across the United States. Most places featured a parade and two 2-hour performances. Then the whole show would be struck, loaded, and moved overnight to the next town. I remember being impressed by traveling carnivals as a little girl, admiring how quickly they would arrive in town, set up, entertain, then tear down and be gone! Buffalo Bill's show even makes these carnivals pale in comparison.

By far, the most lasting legacy of the Wild West shows is the depiction of romance and conquest, based on real people and events created and disseminated across boundaries of race, class, and geography. Western shows generated interest for Western entertainment. This is still evidenced in western films, modern rodeos, and circuses, still employing the same events and skills as cowboys did in Wild West shows. I don't know about you, but give me a good book or movie set in the "wild west," and I'm entertained for hours!

* * * * *

NOW IT'S YOUR TURN:

* Have you ever been to a rodeo? Ever participated in one?

* If you lived during the time Buffalo Bill's shows were touring, what part would you want to see the most? Why?

* If you were to be *part* of a wild west show, what role would you love to fulfill?

* What did you like most about today's post?

---

BIO

Tiffany Amber Stockton has been crafting and embellishing stories since childhood, when she was accused of having a very active imagination and cited with talking entirely too much. Today, she has honed those childhood skills to become an author and speaker who works in the health & wellness and personal development industry, helping others become their best from the inside out. She is also an educational consultant with Usborne Books.

She lives with her husband and fellow author, Stuart Vaughn Stockton, along with their two children and Nova, their Shiba Inu mix, in Colorado. She has sold twenty (21) books so far and is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, and LinkedIn.

America's First Female Superstar

By Vickie McDonough

Phoebe Ann Moses--do you recognize the name? Some sources site her last name as Mosley. Phoebe was born in August 16th, 1860, in Ohio. She grew up in a poor family, and after her father died, she was sent to Darke County Infirmary in Ohio, where she was educated and taught to sew. At age ten, she was sent to work for a family who treated her cruelly. She called them “the wolves” and soon ran away and returned to her family. She helped support them by hunting game and selling it to a local shopkeeper. Her shooting skill grew quickly, and she was soon able to pay off her family’s mortgage.

Have you figured out who she is yet? 

Annie Oakley, the most skilled female shooter of the 19th century.

In 1875, when Annie was just 15, she stunned Frank Butler, an expert shootist and vaudeville performer, when she beat him in a Thanksgiving competition. Frank fell in love almost at first sight, and the next year, he and Annie married. A few years later, when Frank’s partner took ill, Annie replaced him, amazing audiences with her shooting skills. At that time, she adopted the stage name of Annie Oakley. They joined a vaudeville show, and Annie began making her own costumes--ones more modest than the risqué outfits the other females wore.

In 1884, Anne met Sitting Bull, the Sioux Indian chief. He was so impressed with her abilities that he dubbed her “Little Sure Shot.” In 1885, Annie joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and performed in the show for the next seventeen years. Annie dazzled audiences by shooting the flame off candles and corks out of bottles. She even shot off the end of a cigarette that her husband held in his teeth. Talk about trusting your wife! Annie could shoot distant targets while looking into a mirror, hit the edge of a playing card at 30 paces, and shoot holes in cards thrown into the air before they hit the ground. 

Annie toured Europe for three years and even met Queen Victoria. In 1901, Annie was injured in a railroad accident and partially paralyzed for a time, but she recovered and went on the star in a melodrama called The Western Girl. After she and Frank retired, Annie did exhibition work to raise money for orphan charities and the Red Cross. Annie died on November 3, 1926, and just eighteen days later, Frank joined her. Annie’s life was commemorated by the Irving Berlin musical, Annie Get Your Gun. She will always be known as America’s first woman superstar.

Call of the Prairie, book 2 in the Pioneer Promises series by Vickie McDonough. 

Sophie Davenport fears life is passing her by. Her strict, overprotective parents have kept her close to home because of the severe asthma attacks she sometimes endures. She longs to live a normal life and hopes to marry, but that dream seems impossible. When her aunt has a tragic accident and requests someone come to Kansas to help her, no one is available except Sophie. Her father, tied up with business, reluctantly agrees to let her go. Sophie is ecstatic and sees this trip as her one chance to prove to her parents—and herself—that she’s capable of living on her own. But things in the small town of Windmill are not as her aunt portrayed. And her aunt’s handsome neighbor, guardian of two of the children her aunt cares for after school, obviously doubts her abilities. Will the Kansas dust, the drama, and difficulties prove too much for Sophie? Or will she lose her heart to her neighbor and succumb to the call of the prairie?

Vickie McDonough grew up wanting to marry a rancher, but instead, she married a computer geek who is scared of horses. She now lives out her dreams in her fictional stories about ranchers, cowboys, lawmen and others living in the western 1800s. Vickie is the award-winning author of 29 published books and novellas. Her books include the fun and feisty Texas Boardinghouse Brides series, and End of the Trail, which was the OWFI 2013 Best Fiction Novel winner. Whispers on the Prairie, which released last July, was chosen by Romantic Times as one of their Recommended Inspirational Books for July.

Vickie is a wife of thirty-eight years, mother of four grown sons, one daughter-in-law, and grandma to a feisty seven-year-old girl. When she’s not writing, Vickie enjoys reading, antiquing, watching movies, and traveling. To learn more about Vickie’s books or to sign up for her newsletter, visit her website: www.vickiemcdonough.com