Americana & the U.S. • Buried Treasures

I had a presentation at Heartland of Greenville Nursing Home in 1981 in Greenville, Ohio on the topic of Annie Oakley. My talk was based on artifacts I had excavated at the site of Annie Oakley’s mother’s home in North Star, Ohio, in 1976. After my speech, a nursing home resident named “Bud” Beem, 67 years old, revealed to me the most fantastic story! He told me when Annie Oakley had come back to Ohio to shoot at the Grand American trapshoot at Vandalia, Ohio, in 1925, Annie had visited a friend of her family named Art Been (Bud’s relative) on a Darke County farm near North Star, Ohio.

“Art had this old single shot .22 and asked Annie if he set some muskrat traps and hung them on opened back barn door, if she could hit the traps’ pans from out in corn stubble field to the south? She just smiled and took the .22 and walked out a long way into the field. There were three of us boys there and Art handed me the box of .22 cartridges and was thrilled when he told me to hand them to Annie as she shot! As soon as Art had hung the  traps off door pegs and walked out where we stood in the field, Annie started shooting. The other two boys were picking up the ejected brass shell casings from the stubble, as I excitedly handed Annie the bullets. I remember one of the bullets I had misplaced in her hand and rolled out falling into the stubble where the other boys couldn’t find it. I planned to find it later. When we all went to the barn door after Annie finished shooting, we looked in awe at all the traps not only tripped by bullets, but she’d blown the trap pans clean off!”

The story excited me and I asked Bud if I were to come back and drive him there, could he show me the location of this historic moment? “Well Jim, I was 12 and haven’t been back there in nearly 60 years and though I’ve heard the house and barn are gone…I spent so much time in search of that dropped live .22 round; maybe I could recognize that field from a nearby road?” The mention of the lost live round excited me as owner of a metal detector. If I could find a live .22 bullet in that field, it had to be the one dropped form Annie Oakley’s hand!

A few days later, after receiving permission from head of staff (with warning not to let him leave the car) to take Mr. Beem on an outing, I picked Bud up and we drove around Darke County in a fruitless search for the site. Then suddenly Bud said, pointing out to a field, “That’s it, Jim!” Before I could stop him, he was out of the car, with walker into muddy field.

By the time I had pulled over, parked and reached Bud, he and his walker were mired in mud on slope of the field! I literally lifted him by his belt from mud to higher ground as Bud ever more excitedly kept saying “This is it, Jiml” At crest of slope he fell silent. “From here is where Annie shot!” Pointing north, he said “She shot that way toward trees where barn had stood!” My heart jumped, because beyond Bud’s failing eyes to the north I spotted the ruins of a barn and father east remnants of a farm house! At that moment I was positive we were in the right place. When I looked back at Bud, he had tears in his eyes. “Right here is where Annie Oakley shot, where she dropped the live .22 cartridge…and she shot those traps on that barn door over there!”

All the way back to the nursing home, Bud’s face retained the angelic look of a 12 year old boy who had relived an historic moment from his past. When we arrived back at Heartland Home, I suspended my excited anticipation of returning to the site with my metal detector; but plotting how to get muddy Bud back to his room unseen!? We made a dash up the steps, down the hall and into his room. He was changing his muddy pants, shoes when out in the hall I was confronted by that head of staff. “Well, I got Bud back!” She smiled wryly, sighing “Yes, I saw his muddy tracks leading to his room!” I explained how he had gotten away from me. She was good about it, when she saw how excited Bud was with the adventure.

I drove straight back to the site. Moving back and forth with metal detector on rise where Bud had stood, there wasn’t a single metallic reading, UNTIL A SUDDEN SHARP SIGNAL OF THE MACHINE! I took handfuls of mud and ran them under detector, till one handful sounded loudly! When I opened my hand, there was the muddy, but unmistakable form of the LIVE .22 CARTRIDGE! I HAD IT! I literally danced in the field! I put the bullet in a plastic bag and began walking straight for the barn ruins. What I was thinking was how Bud had told Art Beem for years had left the shot traps hanging on the barn door to show anybody he took there. Were they still there when the barn collapsed? At the corner of the barn I could see the evidence of a small door threshold, then hinge marks in rotted wood on the ground! My excitement rose as I spotted evidence of a rotted door at my feet. I went to my knees and began pulling away rotten wood, as I scraped the dirt with a small digging tool I had brought along in my camera bag.

There was too much metal debris like nails and downspout debris to use metal detector. One swipe of the raking tool brought up a small chain I instantly recognized as A MUSKRAT TRAP CHAINI A few swipes later, I came up with A PANLESS MUSKRAT TRAP! I was breathless as I feverously raked at the dirt. Then A SECOND TRAP WITH BLOWN-OFF PAN EMERGED! I had all but finished my search when among pieces of lead bullet fragments embedded in rotted wood, the trap piece which I believed was most telltale artifact of that historic moment, A MUSKRAT TRAP PAN WITH A .22 BULLET HOLE RIGHT THROUGH IT’S CENTER MADE BY A PERFECT SHOT BY ANNIE OAKLEY THAT DAY IN 1925!

As I walked back that distance from barn ruins to hill’s crest, I was thinking how Bud had lead me to the site of the historic moment Annie Oakley had demonstrated her unrivaled skill of shooting perhaps for the last time in her life; and I had unearthed the evidence of that moment! Before leaving, I went back to barn and took photos holding uncleaned traps beside a book which had come out in that year of 1981. Driving back to Wapakoneta, Ohio, I stopped at Annie Oakley’s gravestone in the Brock cemetery and showed Annie’s spirit what I had found.

A few days later, I took the cleaned artifacts back to Heartland and showed Bud. Bud’s joy when I said “Bud, this is the physical evidence of your Annie Oakley story being TRUE!”