Cardiff Giant: The carving behind the discovery
The Cardiff Giant was a carved gypsum figure presented as a petrified man. Workers uncovered it on October 16, 1869, while digging a well behind William Newell's barn in Cardiff, New York. The figure was about ten feet tall and roughly three thousand pounds. Newell covered it with a tent, and crowds arrived. Behind that apparent discovery stood George Hull, a New York tobacconist who had arranged the figure's creation and burial before the digging began.
Hull's plan followed an argument at a Methodist revival meeting. He had disputed with Reverend Turk and his supporters over a biblical reference to giants. Hull was attracted to science and Charles Darwin's theory of evolution; he emerged from the argument determined to stage a fake giant. Stories about petrified people were already circulating. In 1858, Alta California had published a fabricated letter claiming that a prospector became petrified after drinking liquid from a geode. Other newspapers had printed similar stories. Hull's scheme entered a setting where the idea of a human body turned to stone was already familiar.
The manufacturing journey began in Fort Dodge, Iowa. In 1868, Hull, accompanied by H. B. Martin, hired men to quarry a large block of gypsum, telling them it was intended for an Abraham Lincoln monument in New York. Hull shipped the block to Edward Burkhardt, a German stonecutter in Chicago. Burkhardt hired Henry Salle and Fred Mohrmann to sculpt the figure. Steps to conceal the carving are reported to have included hanging quilts to muffle its sound, although Burkhardt's knowledge of Hull's intentions remains unclear. The Cardiff Giant was designed to resemble Hull's form, linking the finished object's appearance to the man directing the scheme.
Making a recent carving seem ancient required further work. Hull consulted a geologist about petrification and removed the figure's hair and beard after learning that hair would not petrify. A sponge soaked in sand and water was used on its surface, while steel knitting needles embedded in a board made marks intended to resemble pores. Stains and acids added a weathered appearance, and sulfuric acid deepened its color. Hull transported the Cardiff Giant by railroad to Union, near Binghamton, and then by wagon to Newell's farm in November 1868. By that stage he had spent $2,600 on the project. The figure was buried there late that month.
Nearly a year later, Newell hired Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols to dig the supposed well. Their discovery launched an attraction whose pricing changed quickly. Visitors entered without charge on the first day; soon after, a tent enclosed the site and admission cost 50 cents for a 15-minute viewing. Daily attendance rose to roughly three to five hundred people. Demand for wagons and carriages increased, and local hotels and restaurants saw a surge in customers. Some visitors believed the Cardiff Giant was a petrified man, while others believed it was a statue.
Geologist John F. Boynton rejected the possibility of a fossilized man, but proposed that the figure was an older statue carved by a French Jesuit. Cornell University's first president, Andrew D. White, questioned the well's location: it was inconvenient for the house and barn, which already had access to a spring and stream. Yale paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh examined the Cardiff Giant and focused on its soluble gypsum and fresh tool marks. A long burial in wet earth was incompatible with those marks remaining fresh. Some theologians and preachers nevertheless defended the figure's authenticity.
Hull sold his part-interest for $23,000 to a group led by David Hannum, which moved the figure to Syracuse for exhibition. P. T. Barnum offered $50,000 for it and was refused. He then arranged for its shape to be modeled covertly in wax and reproduced in plaster. Barnum displayed his copy in New York while claiming his was genuine and the competing giant was fake. Hannum sued over that claim. On December 10, 1869, Hull confessed to the press. Both figures were exposed as fakes in court on February 2, 1870, and the judge ruled that Barnum could not be sued for calling a fake giant fake.
The original figure continued traveling after the court proceedings. It appeared at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition but attracted little attention there. Iowa publisher Gardner Cowles, Jr. later bought it for his basement rumpus room, using it as a coffee table and conversation piece. In 1947, he sold it to the institution now called Fenimore Farm & Country Village in Cooperstown, New York, where it remains displayed. Another copy is displayed at The Fort Museum and Frontier Village in Fort Dodge. The owner of Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, formerly in Farmington Hills, Michigan, has said that the copy displayed there is Barnum's. Mark Twain's short story "The Legend of the Capitoline Venus" was inspired by the giant, and its ghost appears in his story "A Ghost Story."