The Cardiff Giant

If one was to go south from Syracuse, NY for a Sunday afternoon drive, in about a half hour they might come to the small village of Cardiff.  It was here on a brisk October 16, 1869 afternoon on the farm of William Newell, while digging a well, that Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols uncovered a petrified 10’ tall man.  At first they believed they had dug up an ancient Indian corpse, but it was soon decided that this petrified specimen was some sort of giant rather than a common man.

William Newell, knowing a good thing, set up a tent over the giant and charged admission for the wagonloads of curious people that arrived to view this wonder of the world.  Learned scholars pronounced the oddity a fake, but the droves of sightseers arrived steadily anyway.

The giant, whatever it was, was sold to a group that moved it into the much larger city of Syracuse where it again went on display, and continued to make money for the owners.  P. T. Barnum, showman extraordinaire, attempted to buy the petrified giant, but it was deemed not for sale even for the princely offer of $50,000.  Not to be outdone, Mr. Barnum surreptitiously made a copy of the giant, declared the original a fake, and displayed his own version in New York City, an obviously much larger market.  The Syracuse giant owners sued Barnum for calling their giant a fake, but ultimately the Judge decided it was not wrong to call a fake a fake, so Barnum won the case.

In the meantime a cousin of William Newell, named George Hull, admitted he had caused the giant to be manufactured by a Cleveland, Ohio German stone cutter Edward Burghardt, placed in the ground at Newell’s farm for a year, and then ‘discovered’ by the well diggers.  It was he that had sold the giant to the Syracuse group.

The Cardiff Giant, after residing in several other places, finally settled in Cooperstown, New York at the Farmer’s Museum, where it yet lies in state.  Barnum’s fake copy of the original fake resides in a museum in Farmington Hills, Michigan.