Frank Butler, Annie Oakley’s husband, has to be one of the most unjustly maligned figures in the American West. Films portray him as a philandering cad, jealous of his wife’s skill with firearms and capable of resorting to pathetic and destructive measures to assert his manhood.
In 1935’s Annie Oakley, Frank doesn’t even get to use his own name. As Toby Walker, he wounds Annie while shooting a coin from her hand and temporarily puts her out of business.
In 1950’s Annie Get Yo

March 2013
In This Issue:
More In This Issue
- Are These Arizona Rangers?
- Did Indians Really Whoop and Holler When they Attacked, or is that Just Something in the Westerns?
- What is the historical significance of Arizona’s Sierra Estrellas?
- Festival of Books
- Give Me a Homestead
- Picture-Perfect Custer
- What is the Treaty of Hard Labor?
- Wet Your Whistle at These Historic Saloons
- Red Hot Chili Weapon
- The Gentleman Vigilante
- Candy Moulton
- Was George Custer’s body mutilated after the Little Big Horn battle?
- March 2013 Events
- Did Old West cowboys ever use a two-handed grip to fire their handguns?
- Canyon, Texas
- Billie Bierer’s Buffalo soldier Reads
- Dragoons in Apacheland
- Gunfighter in Gotham
- Texas Dames
- Something Big
- Honoring Elmore
- Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher
- The Irish Influence
- Surviving in Tucson…
- On Wild Bunch Time
- Frank Butler
- The Yankee “Sixteen Shooter”
- The Elusive Outlaw
- Back in the Badlands
- The Arizona Rangers