Books from Annie Oakley's Private Library to Auction

A collection of books from the personal library of famous sharpshooter Annie Oakley is coming to Blackwell Auctions’ March 18 'The American Sale'.

The 395-lot auction contains art, historical objects, and highly important signed ephemera, presidential documents, letters and autographs, and a collection of legendary sharpshooter Annie Oakley’s personal possessions. Items include a personal check made out to her neice signed by Oakley with her marriend name (Butler0 and a silver pocket watch gifted to Theodore Roosevelt by his sister.

Among 16 books going under the hammer owned, and, in some cases, signed, by Oakley are:

* Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin. Inside cover is inscribed in Oakley's hand, "Property of Annie Oakley, Nutley, N.J."

* Pipetown Sandy, by American composer and bandleader, John Philip Sousa. Inscribed and signed by Sousa to Frank Butler, Oakley's husband

* Three Men in a Boat  by Jerome K. Jerome, with Oakley's name stamp and likeness inside cover

* Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, 1801, first hot-pressed edition published by Rawle in Philadelphia

* The History of the Rise, Progress, & Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament, Vol.2, by Thomas Clarkson, M.A. Published by James P. Park, Philadelphia, 1808. Includes fold out illustration of the layout of a slave ship

* Pickett and His Men by Lasalle Corbell Pickett, published by Foote & Davies, Atlanta, 1900. Signed by the author, wife of American Civil War General George E. Pickett

“Most of the signed documents and letters in this collection haven’t been offered for sale in more than a generation, if ever at all, and many were museum deaccessions,” said Blackwell Auctions’ owner, Edwin Bailey. Autographed items include pieces signed by US presidents Abraham Lincoln, William Henry Harrison, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, John Tyler, John Quincy Adams, and FDR. Also represented are two signers of the Declaration of Independence, Civil War figures Robert E. Lee, Admiral David Farragut and Jefferson Davis. The signatures of literary lions Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, are also in this collection.

All of the Annie Oakley items to be auctioned come from a direct descendent of Oakley’s half-sister Emeline Patterson.