Annie Oakley Lived Down The Street

Annie Oakley Lived Down The Street. . , Annie "Little Sureshot" Oakley and her husband Frank Butler lived in Cambridge from 1913 to 1915. They first came to Cambridge in 1913 as part of the touring Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. They fell in love with the area and built a home on Hambrooks Boulevard. Annie put on several free shooting exhibitions. Local tradition holds that a neighbor, John Orr, would regale friends by telling them how Annie would shoot cigarettes out of her husband's mouth, especially when she was angry., Friends and neighbors have recorded many tales of her extraordinary accuracy. Some include shooting a quarter in her husband's fingers, making it spin and splitting a card in half from thirty feet away, while he held it in his hand. Once she shot a basket of walnuts off a neighbor's tree while sitting in her rocker, then gave them to him and stated that she just couldn't resist shooting them off his tree. She even used her bird dog, Dave, as part of one of her tricks. He was trained to sit still as she shot an apple off his head, without flinching., As a performer, she could outshoot any man. She once shot a ball, that was being twirled around, backward over her shoulder using its reflection on the blade of her bowie knife, as a guide. In Berlin, during her travels around the world, she shot a cigarette from Prince Wilhelm's mouth, at his request. He had seen her do this in London.