Sharpshooter. Born Elizabeth Servaty in New Haven, Connecticut, she was working in Winchester Arms Company when she met Adolph Toepperwein a vaudeville-circuit shooting act who was employed as an exhibition shooter. Married to Toepperwein in 1903, he gave her shooting lessons, discovered she was a natural and by 1904, they were working as a team professionally doing shooting shows. Nicknamed "Plinky" they performed together in a career that spanned forty years. Their displays of expertise included shooting while standing on their heads, while lying on their backs, break two targets simultaneously, etc. She was the first woman in the United States to qualify as a national marksman with the military rifle and the first woman to break 100 straight targets at trapshooting, a feat she repeated more than 200 times, often with a twelve-gauge Winchester model 97 pump gun. She also held the world endurance trapshooting record of 1,952 of 2,000 targets in five hours and twenty minutes. The celebrated shooter Annie Oakley, once stated she was the greatest shot I've ever seen. She died at the age of 63 in San Antonio, Texas and posthumously inducted into the Trapshooting Hall of Fame in 1969.
Sharpshooter. Born Elizabeth Servaty in New Haven, Connecticut, she was working in Winchester Arms Company when she met Adolph Toepperwein a vaudeville-circuit shooting act who was employed as an exhibition shooter. Married to Toepperwein in 1903, he gave her shooting lessons, discovered she was a natural and by 1904, they were working as a team professionally doing shooting shows. Nicknamed "Plinky" they performed together in a career that spanned forty years. Their displays of expertise included shooting while standing on their heads, while lying on their backs, break two targets simultaneously, etc. She was the first woman in the United States to qualify as a national marksman with the military rifle and the first woman to break 100 straight targets at trapshooting, a feat she repeated more than 200 times, often with a twelve-gauge Winchester model 97 pump gun. She also held the world endurance trapshooting record of 1,952 of 2,000 targets in five hours and twenty minutes. The celebrated shooter Annie Oakley, once stated she was the greatest shot I've ever seen. She died at the age of 63 in San Antonio, Texas and posthumously inducted into the Trapshooting Hall of Fame in 1969.
Bio by: John "J-Cat" Griffith
Inscription
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
(OUR PLINKY)
HER LIFE AN IDEAL, HER MEMORY AN INSPIRATION
Family Members
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