The Cardiff Giant Was a Hoax. You Can Still Visit the Original.

On November 3, 1869, Professor James Hall looked at the stone man behind William Newell's barn in Cardiff, New York, and called it "certainly a great curiosity," according to the Massachusetts Historical Society's scrapbook of the affair. In late November, Yale's Othniel C. Marsh wrote that it was "of very recent origin, and a most decided humbug." By then Newell had been charging 50 cents a look for more than two weeks.

Timeline

• Late summer 1868: George Hull, a cigar maker from Binghamton, has a block of gypsum carved in Chicago. He is the model.
• November 1868: The figure is buried behind the barn of Hull's cousin, William "Stub" Newell.
• October 16, 1869: Well diggers hired by Newell unearth it.
• Two days later: Newell raises the price of a look from 25 cents to 50 cents.
• Autumn 1869: Hull sells the giant to a syndicate led by David Hannum for $23,000, a figure the Massachusetts Historical Society and Archaeology magazine share. The Onondaga Historical Association says $37,500. The giant moves to Syracuse.
• Autumn 1869: P.T. Barnum offers $50,000 for it and is refused. The Onondaga account makes the offer $60,000 for a three-month lease. Barnum has a plaster copy made and shows it in New York.
• December 10, 1869: Hull confesses to the press.
• Early 1870: The syndicate asks a court to stop Barnum from showing his copy.
• 1947: Fenimore Farm in Cooperstown buys the original.

Photo: The Cardiff Giant being raised from the pit, 1869, photographer unknown, public domain

The stone

The idea came out of a late-night argument with a Methodist preacher about the Bible's giants, and Genesis 6:4: "There were giants in the earth in those days." The Public Domain Review names the preacher as Henry B. Turk. Hull bought a block of gypsum in Fort Dodge, Iowa, which Fenimore Farm puts at five tons. The finished figure weighed almost 3,000 pounds, according to Archaeology magazine, and an 1869 print sold to the public gives its length as 10 feet, 4½ inches.

Photo: The Cardiff Giant at the Farmers' Museum, Martin Lewison, CC BY-SA 2.0

Two marble cutters, Frederick Mohrman and Henry Salle, carved it in Chicago, with Hull posing as the model. The whole scheme cost Hull a little over $2,600, by Wikipedia's count and the Onondaga Historical Association's.

Marsh's objection was physical. Gypsum dissolves in wet ground, and a figure buried for centuries would not still show fresh tool marks.

The fake of the fake

Barnum's copy drew bigger crowds than the original, the Onondaga Historical Association reports. The syndicate went to court to stop him, and the judge, in the version Archaeology magazine tells, answered: "Bring your giant here, and if he swears to his own genuineness as a bona fide petrifaction, you shall have the injunction you ask for." No contemporary record of the ruling turned up, and no named judge.

The Barnum copy is now at Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Where the original is

You can see the original Cardiff Giant in the main barn at Fenimore Farm in Cooperstown, a museum older accounts call the Farmers' Museum. It bought the giant in 1947 and calls it "America's Greatest Hoax."

Photo: Cardiff Giant historical marker, Cooperstown, Martin Lewison, CC BY-SA 2.0

Sources worth your time

• Archaeology magazine's hoaxes feature: the court exchange and Marsh's verdict in one place.
• The Massachusetts Historical Society's post: a scrapbook of 1869 clippings and Andrew D. White's 1902 account.
• The Public Domain Review's photograph essay: who carved it, who posed, and the argument that started it.