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Did you know? Charley Parkhurst, a famous stagecoach driver, was a woman, but it was not well know until after her death.
TakeawaysWild West women were skilled with a rifle and riding a horse.Calamity Jane asked to be buried beside Wild Bill Hickcock, the only man she ever loved.Annie Oakley shot a cigarette ash out of the hands of the German Kaiser.Many Wild West women lived a life not dictated by society. These women were sharpshooters, stage coach drivers, Pony Express riders and even lived lives of lawlessness. Meet a few of these famous Wild West women.
Annie Oakley
Annie Oakley was only twelve years old when she shot the head off of a running quail. She was well-known as "a sure shot" that Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany let her shoot the ash off his cigarette while he held it in his hand.
Annie, born in 1860 in Ohio as Phoebe Annie Oakley Mosey, became known as "Little Miss Sure Shot" when she performed in Colonel Cody's Wild West Show along with Sitting Bull. She was equally adept at using the rifle or a six shot pistol.
As a child, she never attended school. Her parents were Quakers who after a tavern fire, left Pennsylvania and moved to Ohio. Annie was the fifth child of seven. Her father died in 1866 and Annie's mother remarried and had another child. When her stepfather died, Annie was sent to the county poor farm. During this time, she was part of a foster family and suffered abuse and neglect. Her mother remarried a third time and Annie was sent to rejoin her family.
Shooting game at age nine just to support the family was the beginning of Annie's ability with guns. She was such a dead shot that at the age of 16, she entered a shooting contest against Frank Butler. She won the marksmanship award and Frank Butler. After they were married, she was his assistant but he soon realized that she was a better shot and he then managed her career. For 17 years she was the most famous performer in Colonel Cody's Wild West Show. She was able to shoot a dime tossed in the air from 90 feet away. She could puncture a playing card from 90 feet away with five or six shots.
Injured in a train wreck, she required five operations and was paralyzed for a short time. When she recovered, she did less performing. However, at the age of 62, she hit 100 clay targets straight from the 16 yard mark.
She died in 1926 in Ohio. A woman of great spirit and determination, she broke barriers for women through her talents.
Belle Starr
A woman on the opposite side of the law than Annie Oakley was Belle Starr, famous Wild West Woman. Myra Belle Smiley Starr, born in 1848, in Carthage, MO. She was well educated and excelled at many school subjects. Her father was a wealthy innkeeper and her mother was related to the Hatfield clan of the famous Hatfield and McCoy feud.
As a teenager, Belle reported the Union troop locations to the Confederates. When the Union burned Carthage to the ground, the family moved to Texas. Belle had been friends with Cole Younger who joined up with Frank and Jesse James whose gang often hid out at the Smiley farm. Their influence fueled Belle's enthusiasm for outlaw ways.
In 1866, she married Jim Reed and had a daughter and a son. When Jim shot and killed a man who had accidentally killed his younger brother, the family had to flee and hide in California. Within a few years, he was robbing and passing counterfeit money. Belle was supposedly his accomplice. Again the two went into hiding with Belle going to Dallas, Texas.
It was here that her reputation for lawlessness flourished. She was living off the robbery money and wore buckskins, velvet skirts, and a Stetson hat with a plume and she wore two pistols. She hung out in saloons and played cards and dice games. She was known to ride her horse in the town's streets shooting her pistols into the air.
Jim was killed in 1874 trying to escape from a sheriff. Belle gave her children to her family and left for Indian Territory in OK where she continued her lawless ways. She bribed the local officials to look the other way for her rustling enterprises. In 1880, she married Sam Starr.
Judge Parker, the Hanging Judge, wanted desperately to catch Belle in her criminal activities. He finally was able to sentence her to nine months in jail. She was a model prisoner and when released, she went back to her old ways.
She faced several charges of robbery but was not convicted. Sam Starr was killed by a family enemy.
Belle died just days before her 41st birthday on 3 February 1889 when she was shot in the back while riding her horse. No one was ever charged with her murder but the suspects included Edgar Watson with whom she feuded over land, her lover Cherokee Indian Jim July and her own son, Ed.
Belle, a legend in her own time, continued to be famous with the making of several movies concerning her lawless life.
Charley Parkhurst
Charley Parkhurst was slender, five foot seven inches tall, had a scar, a dislocated cheek bone, and a missing eye. Skin like leather from the sun and wind, Charley was like most stagecoach drivers except that Charley was a woman! She became a legendary Wild West Woman when it was discovered that she was a woman and not the man everyone thought she was.
When Charley died, it was discovered that she was a woman. Charley lived a colorful life as a man. Stagecoach drivers were a hardy group as they had to handle both a shotgun and the whip. Charley Parkhurst whose occupation as a "whip" so called for his experience with the "six-ups" (six horses) drove a stagecoach for many years.
Born in 1812, Charlotte or Charley learned to drive a team of horses. She smoked, chewed tobacco, and drank whiskey. Her voice was raspy and the clothes of jeans and boots disguised her. She drove a stage for the California Stage Lines until 1955. She got pregnant, and left for the southern portion of California were the baby was born and died shortly after birth.
She then settled in Redwood City where a horse kicked her in the face and she lost an eye. She wore a patch and became known as One-eye Charley" or "Cock-eyed Charley."
She lived her life quietly and it was not until her death when it became known that she was a woman and a legend was created. Many stories were told about Charley after her death; many true and many were embellished.
Charley died when she was in her 60s of cancer of the mouth. She had been confined for some time prior to her death due to rheumatism. She was buried in Pioneer Cemetery in Freedom with a simple wood marker on her grave.
Charley chose to live as a man for her own reasons.
Calamity Jane
Another famous woman of the Wild West was Martha Jane Canary born in 1848 in Princeton, Missouri. She wore men's clothes, used vulgar language, chewed tobacco and was skilled with a gun.
Daring to be different than most girls, Martha learned to ride a horse with skill and shoot a rifle.
Martha was the oldest child of six children. Her mother died in 1866 and a year later her father died. Martha as the oldest took care of the family.
The story of how she received her nickname of Calamity Jane is interesting. During a battle with Indians, Captain Egan along with a small group of men in South Dakota was surrounded. The men were fighting and Captain Egan was wounded and fell off his hose. It was said that Martha Canary rode her horse into the fighting and lifted the captain up on her horse and rode out of harm's way. Every man except the Captain and Martha was killed. Captain Egan gave her the name "Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains."
She rode to Fort Laramie, where she met James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickcock. Together, they rode to Deadwood, South Dakota arriving in 1876. Calamity Jane said, "During the month of June, I acted as a pony express rider carrying the U.S. mail between Deadwood and Custer, a distance of fifty miles, over one of the roughest trails in the Black Hills country. As many of the riders before me had been held up and robbed of their packages, mail and money that they carried, for that was the only means of getting mail and money between these points. It was considered the most dangerous route in the Hills, but as my reputation as a rider and quick shot was well known, I was molested very little, for the toll gatherers looked on me as being a good fellow, and they knew that I never missed my mark."
In her autobiography, Jane wrote "While in El Paso, I met Mr. Clinton Burk, a native of Texas, who I married in August 1885 [at 33 years old]. As I thought I had traveled through life long enough alone and thought it was about time to take a partner for the rest of my days. We remained in Texas leading a quiet home life until 1889. On October 28th, 1887, I became the mother of a baby girl, the very image of its father, at least which is what he said, but who has the temper of its mother."
Apparently her drinking got her into trouble with the police in 1901 when Jane appeared at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Buffalo Bill loaned her money to return home. He later said: "I expect she was no more tired of Buffalo than the Buffalo police were of her, for her sorrows seemed to need a good deal of drowning."
On August 1, 1903, at 5:00 p.m. she died. She had requested her funeral to be conducted by the Black Hills Pioneer Society, and supposedly said, "Bury me beside Wild Bill - the only man I ever loved."
She is buried next to Wild Bill in Deadwood just as she requested. |
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