Garst Museum in Greenville set to allow visitors to take aim with Annie Oakley's guns

History buffs and gun enthusiasts have a special opportunity next weekend, all because of Annie Oakley.

Oakley, a small woman, earned a big reputation as a straight shooter.

Sitting Bull, the iconic Lakota Native American whose rebellion led to the wipeout of Gen. George A. Custer and his troops at Little Bighorn in 1876, worked with Oakley after his parole. Both had starring roles in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show. And straight shooting earns appreciation in a land of dreams.

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The older Sitting Bull and the twentysomething Oakley are said to have grown to admire one another. The chief was so taken with Oakley’s ability to shoot that he informally adopted her, naming her Little Sure Shot, a brand she subsequently used as a performer.

Plays, films and a TV series have distorted Oakley into something she was not – more of a tomboy and more flamboyant than the reality – but that’s the way with many American figures.

Witnesses widely insist that Oakley was really good at hitting what her rifle aimed at. She was remarkable for this talent at a time when gunplay and the frontier otherwise were vanishing, if not vanished.

She was born into poverty in 1860 and eventually grew into foster care as Phoebe Ann Mosey in Darke County, Ohio. Oakley first showed her exceptional skills as a young girl killing game to help feed her siblings. After a career during which she performed around the world, Oakley died in Greenville, Ohio, in 1926 not far from her birthplace and the house she lived in as a child.

Her ashes are buried at Brock Cemetery near Greenville. Buried alongside her is Frank E. Butler, her husband, whom she wed at 16. He passed 18 days after she died, it’s said, of grief.

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The Garst Museum, based inside a historical inn at Greenville, houses more than 300,000 area-related artifacts in 35,000 square feet of exhibit space. The National Annie Oakley Center is located among a cluster of connecting sites highlighting historical figures and happenings.

The protocol at most museums involves viewing an artifact, typically stashed protectively behind glass or some plastic alternative. Touching invariably is taboo.

A year ago, the Garst Museum tried something different. For a price, visitors were permitted to hold and aim one of Oakley’s rifles.

The opportunity proved so popular that museum staff has decided to try again July 27-28 inside the Lowell Thomas Meeting Room. Literally up for grabs is Oakley’s 1910 J. Stevens .22 caliber deluxe target rifle with a Scheutzen butt.

Cost is $10 for adults, $5 for youngsters not yet 18. The event, a fundraiser for the Annie Oakley Center Foundation, is scheduled for noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday and noon to 3 p.m. on Sunday.

Gun holding qualifies for a $2 discount on museum admission, which is $12 for adults, $11 for seniors ages 60 and up, and $9 for youths ages 6-17. Children younger than that are admitted free.

Also memorialized at the museum is the signing of the Treaty of Greenville of 1795, which ended 40 years of warfare when Native Americans surrendered their land to settlers. The settlers' breaking of that treaty helped lead to Sitting Bull’s uprising.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Museum to raise funds by allowing guests to handle Annie Oakley's guns