GREENVILLE — Author Shirl Kasper will share some of her new discoveries added to her book, Annie Oakley, written in her “Afterword”. Same book, with the addition of the “Afterword” (and a new cover), the additional chapters feature Annie Oakley and Frank Butler’s early lives, which place Annie on the stage earlier than previously thought and document Frank’s first marriage, and the beginnings of Frank’s career in Camden, New Jersey. The program is free. Admission to the Museum applies.

And as a sneak preview, a few of the extraordinary artifacts recently acquired from a rare private collection will be in a temporary display for all to view while there for the Kasper presentation. The great grandchildren of William and Jennie Longfelder granted final disposition of their great grandparents’ Annie artifacts to Garst Museum’s national Annie Oakley collection. Mr. Longfelders from Nutley, NJ, served as the executor of not only Annie Oakley’s estate but also her husband Frank Butler’s in 1926. A pearl-handled revolver having belonged to Annie Oakley and given to the Longfelder family will be in the temporary exhibit. It will take awhile to accession the donated items and incorporate them into the permanent displays. The public is invited to view a few of these amazing artifacts in the temporary exhibit.

After retiring, Kasper decided to revisit Annie Oakley. The original biography, researched and written before today’s wealth of online databases, focused on a detailed reading of Oakley’s eight scrapbooks. With today’s World Wide Web, however, Shirl was able to unearth primary sources all but impossible to find in the 1980s. By plumbing these sources, she has written a new “Afterword” to the original book, which was reprinted and published in 2023 by the University of Oklahoma Press

Kasper is a journalist and historian. She holds a doctorate in American history from the University of Colorado and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Kansas. While at KU in the early 1980s, she began researching Annie Oakley for her master’s thesis, which led to the publication in 1992 of the biography, Annie Oakley, by the University of Oklahoma Press. Shirl worked as a feature writer for The Kansas City Star before leaving journalism to pursue a doctorate in American history. She then joined the National Park Service working as a historian on numerous research and writing projects, including the National Historic Landmarks Program.

This presentation in the Garst Museum’s Speaker Series is sponsored by the Annie Oakley Center Foundation.