Cardiff Giant To Be Exhibited Again

1900

THE BIG FAKE

Cardiff Giant is to be Placed on Exhibition Again

History of the Famous Fake From Fort Dodge.

P. T. Barnum Once Offered Sixty Thousand Dollars for It

Dubuque, Jan. 1. — All the older residents of Webster county and the country in general are on familiar terms with the history of the celebrated Cardiff Giant, that made a fortune for its owners in a few weeks and startled the whole scientific world. Had it not been for the shrewdness of Prof. Marsh of Yale, who refused to be gulled into the commonly accepted belief as to the genuineness of the image the public might have been humbugged indefinitely and the coffers of the owners of the Giant filled to overflowing.

The true birth of the Cardiff Giant was in the brain of George Hull, a Connecticut Yankee, who had the huge block of stone mined near Fort Dodge and transported with infinite difficulty to Boone, where it was shipped to Chicago, where the giant was chiseled out and treated with the proper acids to give the discoloration of age. It was then shipped to Union, New York, and, reshipped to Cortland, and thence carried during the night to the farm of "Stubb" Newell, in Cardiff, and duly buried by moonlight. That was in 1868.

A year later Newell "happened" to be digging a well and "much to his surprise" came across a strange image. The news spread about the unearthing of a fossil man of gigantic stature and thousands of people were soon flocking to see the "discovery." Over seven thousand dollars were made before it was removed from the hole where it was buried. It was then placed on exhibition and shipped about the country, no one daring to doubt its genuineness. Finally "Tamus" became so popular that P. T. Barnum offered sixty thousand dollars for his services for three months, and thereupon a number of other pieces of stone about the country were "discovered" and were claimed to be "original Tamuses." It is even now said that the giant of the world's fair was not the original "Tamus, God of Gods." Thousands thought that they were gazing on the biggest humbug on earth, when they were told that Tamus was the original Cardiff Giant. It is said that all this while the great original was slumbering peacefully in the freight office of the New York Central at Syracuse.

By some odd way the stone found its way to Syracuse, was stored away in the freight office and relic hunters left him unmolested. The road kept a bill on file in its archives for freight due from someone, who could not be found.

And now, it is said, after his retirement of fifteen to twenty years, the Cardiff Giant, dug from the gypsum beds of Fort Dodge, is to be again placed on exhibition, this time advertised as the biggest fake of the century.

—Waterloo Semi Weekly Courier, Waterloo, Iowa, Jan. 2, 1900, p. 1.