In the 19th century, belief in giants and a fascination with bones and flesh combined to create a strange phenomenon – the petrified giant. The most notable and best-documented of these hoaxes occurred in 1869, when two workmen digging a well near Cardiff, New York, discovered a giant stone man underground.
The find was dubbed the “Cardiff Giant” and started a craze for fossilized giants that lasted for another forty years before finally dying out in the early 20th century.
Discovered in 1869 in New York, the Cardiff Giant was a 10-foot-tall “fossilized humanoid” that many Christians believed was proof of the existence of biblical giants.
A gigantic discovery and an even bigger fraud
The strange story of the Cardiff Giant does not begin in old times, but in 1866 with a man named George Hull. Hull, a cigar maker and staunch atheist, was in Iowa on a business trip when he met Pastor Turk, a Methodist preacher.
Hull and the Venerable exchanged heated words. The Minister mentioned a passage from Genesis referring to antediluvian giants, which sparked an idea in Hull's mind.
To put his strange plan into action, Hull returned to Iowa in 1868 to find a suitable stone for his purposes. After securing it, he hired men to quarry an 11-foot block of gypsum, telling them it was for a memorial to Abraham Lincoln that was to be built in New York. He then shipped the giant block to Chicago, where it was shaped by a German stonemason sworn to secrecy.
The completed giant, some 10 feet long and weighing 3,000 pounds, was shipped by rail in November 1868 to Cardiff, New York, where Hull and his cousin and co-conspirator William Newell buried the enormous sculpture.
A year later, Newell hired Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols to dig a well on his property. On October 16, 1869, the workers struck a rock under three feet of earth. One man, upon removing the earth and seeing a immense stone foot, reportedly exclaimed, “I declare an old Indian is buried here!”
What followed the statue’s unearthing could be described as a “giant frenzy.” Once word spread, people came from miles around to see the sight. Hull and Newell pitched a tent over the statue and charged $0.25 per person to see it. As the crowds grew and Hull saw that he could squeeze even more money out of eager visitors, he doubled the price of admission.
The giant electrified the audience. Many believed they had seen a petrified giant taken straight from the pages of the holy scriptures. A pastor from Syracuse made the same claim, and since when did the clergy ever get it wrong about anything?
Other experts disagreed. Some believed it was a statue built by missionaries to impress local Native American tribes, while others thought it was perhaps a statue made by some old people who predated the arrival of white man, or perhaps the Native Americans themselves.
Andrew White, the first president of Cornell University, visited the site to take a skeptical look at the sensational find. Even the skeptic was impressed by its theatricality—the giant creature lay in its grave, illuminated only by tender candlelight, while peaceful observers stood in still awe of its mass and age. Of course, upon closer inspection, White discovered that the figure was a carved statue, and not a particularly good one at that.
Seeing White’s skeptical reports, and the fact that Newell himself had let the cat out of the bag, Hull was nervous. He sold the giant to David Hannum and a group of businessmen who were interested in the spectacle for a nippy $23,000. The businessmen took the giant’s show on its way to New York.
Meanwhile, PT, Barnum heard about the quarrel surrounding the giant. The legendary showman offered Hannum and his cabal $50,000 for the statue. When Hannum refused, Barnum simply sent a man to look at the Cardiff Giant.
The agent molded a block of wax into the giant's likeness, and Barnum paid to have his own version of the giant carved. When Hannum heard that Barnum's giant was drawing crowds, he uttered the notable words, often attributed to P. T. Barnum himself, “There's a sucker born every minute.”
The end of the gigantic mania
The Cardiff Giant was not the only so-called fossil man found in America in the mid- to late-19th century. The country seemed to be teeming with the bodies of the old dead in stone casings.
Sam Hull created another hoax body, this time called Solid Muldoon, which had a tail resembling a monkey. New York hotels commissioned their own giants, using the stone bodies to attract curious crowds.
The Cardiff Giant, for its part, got into trouble. Hannum took Barnum to court for copying, where the judge told the hoaxer he could get an injunction if the giant came and swore to his authenticity.
Needless to say, a skeptical judge dismissed the case. Meanwhile, Yale paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh denounced the giant as a fraud, writing that the statue was likely recent. George Hull finally confessed to the fraud on December 10.
The statue, which spawned dozens of imitations, was declared a counterfeit. Still, over time, the giant and its many imitations continued to generate revenue for shows and con artists, although the profits never matched those of the early giant craze.
In 1901, the statue appeared at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo. Few noticed it, its moment of glory having passed forty or more years ago. The Cardiff Giant was purchased by a publisher in Des Moines, Iowa. He sold it in 1947 to the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown, New York, where it is now on display.
Sources: “The Cardiff Giant.” Farmersmuseum.org. The Farmer's Museum. January 1, 2015. http://www.farmersmuseum.org/node/2482; Rose, Mark. “When Giants Roamed the Earth.” Archaeology. Volume 58, Number 6. November/December 2005. Retrieved from: http://archive.archaeology.org/0511/etc/giants.html
Image Source: Pixabay.com
