THE GIANT KILLER Chapter Five

 

I take it as a sign of how bad a reputation George Hull had earned even before the Cardiff Giant, that he dare not let the public suspect he had any part of the 2 ½ ton precipitate lump. Hull stayed in the background, while his farmer/cousin William Newell, played the owner and sold a majority share to the Syracuse syndicate. But as December was approaching George instructed his cousin to sell their remaining ¼ share of the giant. The buyer was Alfred Higgins, the Syracuse agent for American Express, a three term alderman for the city of Syracuse, and a lifelong bachelor. It is unclear how much Higgin paid for his share in the unwieldy trinket.

The giant now belonged solely to citizens from Syracuse. Up to then the fame of the town of 40,000 rested on the brine springs on the south side. But now “Salt City”, which supplied preservative to the entire country, could also be known for the entrepreneurship of its most illustrious citizens, David Hannen, Dr. Amos Westcoff, Amos Gilbert, William Spencer, Benjamin A. Son, and now Alfred Higgins. Even the services of Ohio showman Colonel J.W. Wood, were dispensed with.  The Syracuse Six then proceeded to transport the Cardiff Giant  to the Yates Ballroom of the Geological Hall, at State and Lodge streets, in Albany, New York. But Barnum was not to be outdone..

Using the advertisements of the Syracuse Six as a guide, the King of hokum had a plaster giant of his own made and painted to resemble the stone behemoth. And then, because his own museum was still in ashes, Barnum offered his giant for public perusal in Mr. George Wood's (no relation) Museum and Metropolitan Theater, at 1221 Broadway. Barnum's newspaper ads did not, of course, admit to displaying a copy. Barnum asserted the “Albany Giant” was the copy, while Barnum's plaster man was the original.

Readers of the Buffalo Express on Saturday, 15 January, 1870, found an article under the title, “A Ghost Story, by a Witness ”. The author claimed to be living in Manhattan and so short of funds that he had moved into an abandoned hotel on Broadway.  He was terrorized by groans and apparitions all night long, until the ghost finally appeared and explained, “I am the spirit of the Petrified Man that lies across the street there in the Museum. I am the ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no peace, till they have given that poor body burial again” To this sad tale the writer responded, “Why you poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing -- you have been haunting a PLASTER CAST of yourself -- the real Cardiff Giant is in Albany!”

The original inventor of all this, George Hull, must have been gobsmacked. How could this reprobate have ever imagined that his fraud, so carefully crafted and executed could be turned inside out - a humbug made of his humbug.  It was unbelievable, incredible, absolutely amazing. It was a lesson from the old master himself.  You think you know the “con” game, Barnum seemed to be saying You ain't seen nothing yet. The crowds that now jammed Wood's Theater and Museum and the Geological Hall, all knew their legs were being pulled, and were all loving it.

And then a little purple pamphlet appeared for sale in Albany.  The title page read, “THE CARDIFF GIANT HUMBUG—THE GREATEST DECEPTION OF THE AGE”  The author was Benjamin Gue, editor of the Fort Dodge, Iowa, “North West”.   Between the covers were names, dates, bills of lading, interviews and witness statements documenting the creation of the Cardiff Giant, from the 1867 appearance of Mr. Martin in Fort Dodge, through the July 1868 shipment of the stone from Boone, Iowa, to Chicago, to the studio of Eduard Burkhardt, to the giant's arrival in Union, New York.  There were eyewitness memorials of the journey to within three miles of the Newell farm in Cardiff.  Gue had even uncovered records of the fund transfers between Stub Newell and the evil genius, George Hull.  The diligent Mr. Gue had even investigated Mr. Hull's career from marking cards, to selling cigars, to inquiring into Wisconsin Indian burial mounds, to the Cardiff Giant.  Most of what we can now confirm about George Hull, we know because of editor Gue. It was a hull of a story.

The pamphlet was on sale for a few hours before someone bought out the entire edition. However, because Mr. Gue had contracted with a printer in Albany, the next day the newsstand was again fully stocked with “The Cardiff Giant Humbug...” The printer and the author didn't care if the pamphlets were being read or being burned. They were just interested in selling them. The Syracuse syndicate issued a statement denouncing the pamphlet as its own fraud.  But the truth was, the truth didn't matter. The public took to calling the giant, “Old Hoaxy”, they still paid to look at it.  As Barnum said, “Every crowd has a silver lining”.

The crowds in Albany did drop a little after the pamphlet appeared, but unless the giant expanded his repertoire by juggling or doing a soft shoe, once you had seen the Cardiff Giant, there was little interest in seeing it again. So the pamphlet revealing the fraud was just another revenue stream, like Mark Twain's ghost story in the Buffalo paper.  Barnum knew the real craft in advertising, or humbug as Barnum called it, is what I call the “Pet Rock” paradigm.  People will buy a “pet rock” as long as they know you know that they know its actually just a rock.

It appears the only person who failed to figure out that rule was the horse trader David Hannum (above), who demanded an injunction to stop P.T. Barnum from claiming that "The Albany Giant" here after referred to as the  "Fake Giant“ was the fraud, and not Barnum's "Fake, fake giant". 

 The hearing on 2 February, 1870, was held in New York City, before Judge George G. Barnard (above), a Tammany Hall jurist so corrupt that in two years he would be impeached and bared from ever holding public office in New York state again.   Judge Barnard heard the case presented by Hannum and then from Barnum's lawyers, and even from George Hull, who admitted for the first and the only time under oath that he had created the Albany Giant.  

Judge Barnard told Mr. Hannum (above),  “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.”  Baring that event, he said, he was out of the “injunction business”.

Leaving the courtroom, David Hannum was asked why he thought his original fake giant, which had moved to New York City in December, was drawing smaller crowds than Barnum's fake fake giant. He shrugged and then uttered the immortal words, “There's a sucker born every minute.”  Barnum was later blamed for the quote, but he never called his customers suckers. Hull and Hannum both did.  and maybe that was why, the day after Judge Barnard's decision, Barnum's fake fake drew a huge crowd, while Hannum's original fake drew almost nobody. But on the second day, even Barnum's fake drew only 50 customers. It seemed, with the high drama and courtroom farce, the Cardiff Giant had run out of humbug.

The two giants went their separate ways, never having met.  And over time they were both reduced to appearing in county fairs, and side shows and finally in museums of fakes and frauds.  But, it must be said, they both continue to produce a profit for their owners, however small.

Not long after the lost injunction, David Hannum was on board a train when a man asked him to move over a seat. Hannum refused. Sharply the man demanded, “Do you know who I am? I am P. Elmendorf Sloan, the superintendent for this railroad., and my father is Sam Sloan, president of this railroad.” To which Hannum replied, “ "Do you know who I am? I am David Hannum and I'm the father of the Cardiff Giant."  Well, adoptive father, maybe.

Like the other investors in the “Albany Cardiff Giant”,  Doctor Amos Westcoff made money. But for whatever reason he rose from the breakfast table on 6 July, 1873 , went upstairs to his bedroom, and shot himself in the neck. He died quickly of blood loss. His partner, Alfred Higgins, never lost faith in the giant, and until his dying day remained convinced it was a petrified man, straight out of the pages of the Holy Bible. The Reverend Turk, blamed for inspiring the Cardiff Giant, died in 1895, in Iowa.  He accepted no guilt whatsoever.  And that I think is the primary advantage of blind faith.

George Hull made a small fortune from his fraud, and invested it in a commercial block in downtown Binghamton, New York. But his profligate lifestyle quickly ran through his profits, and within five years he was almost broke again.  So....he conceived of an even bigger stone giant - this one with a tail. 

The “Solid Muldoon” was “discovered” outside Pueblo, Colorado on 16 September, 1877, and attracted crowds in Denver and Cheyenne, Wyoming.  But by the time the Colorado Giant reached New York City,  the scheme had gone bust . Gloated a Binghamton newspaper, “This would seem to stop the Giant Man...getting rich without working.”  Little did the editorial writers realize how much work George had put into his frauds. 

Shortly thereafter, the long suffering Hellen Hull died of consumption at 42 years old.  The atheist George allowed her to be buried in a Methodist service. The evil genus himself went broke and was reduced to living with his daughter in Binghampton, He died on 21 October, 1902. Perhaps the most accurate thing he ever said was “I ought to have made myself rich, but I didn't.” Still, recorded another paper's obituary, "Hull was very proud of the (Cardiff Giant) affair, and he never tired of talking about it."  Fifteen days after George's death, in Chicago, the man who had carved the Cardiff Giant, sculptor John Sampson died.

Barnum's Giant, the fake, fake fraud,  currently resides in Farmington Hills, Michigan, inside “Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum”. 

Since 1947, George Hull's original fake has been in Cooperstown, New York, reclining behind a white picket fence inside the “Farmers Museum”. 

And every fall, the folks at the LaFayette Apple Festival, in tiny Cardiff, New York,  provide a walking tour to the Newell farm, the site of the temporary grave for the Cardiff Giant.  

They recreate his discovery and exhumation, around a plaster giant, and I urge you to visit this and the other sites, just to remind yourself to never pass up a chance to laugh at yourself. . It's very healthy.  I believe P.T. Barnum himself endorsed it.

- 30 -

THE GIANT KILLER Chapter Four

 

I know that both Phineas T. Barnum and George Hull each possessed “the ingenuity to dupe, diddle, defraud and gull a whole continent.” But Barnum rebelled against those, like Hull, who held their customers in contempt. “I don't believe in duping the public”, Barnum wrote, . “but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them.” He always tried, he said, to give them more than their money's worth in entertainment. 

On the day the Cardiff Giant saw the light again on Mr. Newell's farm - 16 October 1868 - the self proclaimed “Prince of Humbug” was trying to rebuild his American Museum in New York City, after it had burned down (above) for the third time  The man who had brought America and the world “Tom Thumb”, the "Feejee Mermaid", Jenny Lind “The Swedish Nightingale” (two above), and Chang and Eng, “The Original Siamese Twins”, was finding the revival harder every year.

That fall  P.T.  traveled to cast a professional eye upon the giant still in the ground. Barnum saw the road south from Syracuse “jammed with wagons, stage coaches, horses and people on foot, all bound for Cardiff to take a glimpse at the giant.”  And he paid admission into the tent to gaze upon the great stone face, and feet and over sized circumcised penis. Before boarding the train back to New York City, Barnum (above) told a reporter, “They must not call me the Prince of Humbugs after this. That beats anything I ever did in my life.” But was it the appearance of the giant which made Barnum wary? Was it the presence in Cardiff of his competitor, Colonel Wood? Or did it have something to do with the immoral amoral always black clad mocking presence of George Hull?

As the money began to roll in a member of George Hull's inner circle announced he wanted out.  H.B. Martin, the blacksmith from Marshalltown, who had suffered the month long 40 mile odyssey across Iowa with George, had suffered enough. Maybe he was experiencing an attack of morality, maybe the rising publicity made him nervous, or maybe his brother Frank needed financial help in opening a planned grocery in Ackley, Iowa. Whatever his reason, Martin asked George Hull to buy out his share in the giant.  As soon as the cash was in his hands he disappeared back to Iowa, and was never heard from again in this giant tale

He missed getting rich by a week. The giant had cost Hull and Martin less than $3,000 (Fifty thousand in 2014 dollars). Originally George Hull had ½ share of the giant – it had been his idea - while Newell and Martin each had ¼ share. Buying Martin out had cut into George's profits, and he needed an immediate influx of cash. His cousin, “Stub” Newell still had physical possession of the stone behemoth, and every day increased the chance the farmer would realize the old axiom that possession was nine tenths of the law. Luckily for George, an entrepreneur from Homer, New York stepped up eager to solve his problem: the square jawed David H. Hannan.

He was one of the biggest land owners in Courtland County, New York. Our old friend Mr. Andrew White, described Hannan (above) as “...a horse-dealer in a large way...” (think used car salesman) “...and banker in a small way” (think loan shark). White described Hannan as “keen and shrewd...who had fought his way up from abject poverty, and whose fundamental principle, as he asserted it, was "Do unto others as they would like to do unto you, and–do it first.”.”

Hannan's partners were a whose-who of Syracuse society. Dr. Amos Wescott (above)  was a successful dentist who had served a term as mayor of Syracuse in 1860. Amos Gilbert's family had settled in the area in 1810, and remained powerful in the Baptist church, with the pentagonal rounded out by William Spencer and Benjamin A. Son. Each had invested $5,000 (ninety thousand in 2014 dollars) in the joint venture, and the second week of the exhibition they paid Hull and Newell $23,000 cash ($400,000 in 2014) for a ¾ share of the giant. It seemed a safe in vestment. In two weeks in the out-of-the-way village of Cardiff, the Giant had sold $7,000 in tickets, at 50 cents apiece.

On Sunday, 5 November 1869, the Cardiff Giant was winched out of his temporary grave...

...and loaded into a wagon for the 12 mile journey to Syracuse. He was greeted at the city limits by a marching band playing “See, the Conquering Hero Comes” by Handel. 

His new home was in an exhibit hall on Vanderbilt square, across the street from the open air New York Central Railroad station (above). The next day, Monday, 6 November, 1869,   6,000 people paid $1 each to stare down at the impassive great stone face, and feet and penis, profiting in one day what had taken an entire week to match in Cardiff. The New York Central railroad added a 10 minute delay to all trains passing through Syracuse, long enough to give passengers time to cross the street, pay their dollar and gaze upon the impassive gypsum.

One poet wanted the giant to explain himself. “Speak out, O Giant! stiff, and stark, and grim, Open thy lips of stone, thy story tell; And by the wondering crowd who pay thee court. In thy cold bed, and gaze with curious eyes On thy prone form so huge, and still so human, Let now again be heard, that voice which once, Through all old Onondaga's hills and vales, Proclaimed thy lineage from a Giant race, And claimed as subjects, all who trembling hear. “ One whom the giant spoke to was Galusha Parsons, a lawyer of “most excellent character, sterling integrity, and with much aggressive force”. More importantly, Parsons was from Fort Dodge, Iowa.

The 41 year old Parsons (above) was returning from Washington, having made oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Beeson  v Johns.  He had also just been elected as a state representative for Webster County, Iowa.  Taking advantage of the ten minute stop over in Vanderbilt Square to visit the famous Cardiff Giant., Parsons recognized the stone as home grown. He immediately cabled his political ally Mr. Benjaman Gue, the editor of the Fort Dodge “North West”.  Parsons told Gue, “I believe it is made of that great block of gypsum those fellows got at Fort Dodge a year ago, and shipped east.”

Gue (above) quickly uncovered the truth. The 28 July, 1868 edition of the “Boone Standard” had contained an account of the curious 11 feet 3 inches long, 3 feet 2 inches wide, 1 foot by 10 inches thick, 3 ½ tons of gypsum, shipped to Chicago. But rather than rush into print, editor Gue dispatched reporters to Chicago, to hunt down the sculpture of the giant, and to New York state, to hunt for George Hull's fingerprints.

Meanwhile, over its six week stay in Syracuse, the giant maintained an average of 10,000 visitors a week, at a dollar each. The curious ranged from day laborers to miners, politicians, secretaries, and even Professor O.C. Marsh. The latter – joined by 24 year old Fillmore Smith, a mining engineer -had the audacity to put in print that gypsum was soluble in water, which meant the smooth features of the giant could not have laid in the damp ground behind Mr. Newell's barn for hundreds or thousands of years without dissolving. Marsh labeled the giant “A most decided humbug”.

Our old friend, Andrew White (above), who would one day help found Cornell University, had touched on a more prosaic reason not to believe in the giant. Back in October, he had pointed out, “there was no reason why the farmer should dig a well in the spot where the figure was found...it was convenient neither to the house nor to the barn”  He called the giant “undoubtedly a hoax”. So why was anyone still believing in it?

In fact there was not one Cardiff Giant, there were many. In post revolutionary America, up state New York was the birth place of new religions and the revival of the Great Awakening for many others: the astounding Joseph Smith and his bookish Mormonism, the precipitate diurnal Seventh Day Adventists, the passionate celibacy of the Shakers, the faux spiritualism of the three Fox Sisters, the postponed second coming of the Millerites, and the coitus interrupters of the Oneida post renaissance utopians. These Christian sects had Genesis, 6:4 on their side, “There were giants in the earth in those days...”

To the religious the Cardiff Giant was a fossil, a petrified man, a physical validation of faith. The passionate poet Ralph Waldo Emerson called it “a bona fide petrified human being..” Another preacher explained, “This is not a thing contrived of man, but is the face of one who lived on the earth, the very image and child of God.”

A Yale Divinity student, Mr. Alexander McWhorter, viewed the giant in Syracuse and believed he was obviously a statue. As proof, he found several lines of Phonetician carved into his thigh. Luckily, Mr. McWhorter could read ancient Phonetician, and translate the tale of ancient sailors blown to a distant shore (and 400 miles inland) who had carved the giant to memorialize their survival. Nobody else who could read Phonetician could find any on the giant. But lots of people who could not, were willing to believe the ancient language was there, even though they could not find it.

At a gathering of “experts” in Syracuse, judged by an audience who paid $10 apiece to witness the debate, the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes drilled into the giant's head (behind the ear, so as not to disturb the esthetics) and found nothing but solid stone. The giant, said Holmes, was a statue, but “of great antiquity.” Holmes was followed on the platform by Eramus Dow Palmer, a sculpture. He declared the giant was indeed a statue, but a really bad one, done by a recent amateur. Before Palmer could finish his artistic destruction of the giant, Cyrus Cobb, a competitor of Mr. Palmer's, leap onto the platform and announced “Any man who calls this a humbug brands himself a fool!”  The lecture hall dissolved into shouts and accusations, and one man began beating the living daylights out of the art critic, Palmer.

Once the assailant was arrested, and the hall cleared, a reporter cornered farmer “Stub” Newell, and asked what it all meant. Was the giant a petrified man, an ancient statue, or a cheat?   Newell shrugged and explained, “You pays your money and you takes your chance. They got to see my giant. They got to hear four geniuses at two dollars and fifty cents per genius, and also saw a good fight. That seems like a fair value to me.”

To the Syracuse syndicate – horse trader Hannen, Dr. Westcott, et al -  the melee was delightful news. After tripling their investment, they were ready to take the giant on the road.

- 30 -

THE GIANT KILLER Chapter Three

 

I suspect that George “the giant killer” Hull suffered from a condition known at the time as “moral insanity”. Perhaps this is why his chosen appearance - fancy dark clothes and a handlebar mustache -  became the epitome of villainy for generations. His symptoms included charm, pathological lying, promiscuity and an addiction to gambling, a lack of shame or remorse and a moral versatility in his criminal and business ventures. Today he would be called a sociopath. The primary victim of his disorder was his wife, Helen. She was 16 and pregnant when they married in 1856. And she was his niece. And George's best chance for salvation.

George had begun his criminal career in his twenties, having devised a new method for marking cards. His partner would sell the decks to saloons and gambling clubs at a discount, and then George would appear as a passing salesman, to read the cards and rake in the profits. After a couple of years, George was arrested. Released from jail, his brother took him in and gave him a job in his Bimington cigar factory. George repaid the favor by seducing and impregnating his daughter, Helen.

The family helped the new husband buy a small farm five miles to the north in Port Crane, now Fenton, New York. By the time his second child, Sarah, was born in 1860, George was growing enough tobacco to both sell to his brother, and to open his own cigar shop in Port Crane. Through the four years of the American Civil War, all of George Hull's battles were personal. When it looked like his business would fail, in September of 1864, George torched his own shop and home. With the insurance money, George moved his family to Baraboo, Wisconsin, and enlisted his Iowan brother-in-law to sell his left over cigars.

At about the same time, in the tiny village of Homer, New York, Gideon Emmon was enlisting in company E of the 185^th Volunteer Regiment. But Gideon's war lasted just 6 months and one battle. On the last day of March, 1865, his regiment occupied the White Oak Road, outflanking rebel positions south of Petersburg, Virginia. After digging in to its new position, it was attacked by Rebel infantry, causing just six causalities. History books record this as a mere prelude to the next day's Union victory at Five Forks, which forced the Confederate Army to abandon Richmond, and start on the road to Appomattox Court House and surrender. But Private Gideon Emmon did not participate in that victory. When he finally came home to Cardiff he had a full disability pension to compensate for his missing left arm and his shattered mind, suffered that 31 March, 1865.  He treated his nightmares and pain as best he could, and worked what few odd jobs could be performed by a one armed alcoholic in a farming community. All of this made Gideon an odd hire to dig a well.

His employer on Saturday, 16 October, 1869, was William Newell, nicknamed “Stub” because of his height and stubbornness. He was described at the time as “A man of pretty good intelligence...but not an educated or learned man in any way.” A modern historian calls him “a sober, honest sort of farmer,” “a private man who certainly didn't court celebrity” and “entirely unremarkable” He was also a cousin to George Hull. At about nine that cool clear fall morning, Mr. Newell led Gideon Emmon and fellow veteran Henry Nichols, down the slope from the farm house, and around the barn,  to the only dry spot in the field beyond (above). It was here that Mr. Newell told the men he wanted his new well dug. .

Either workman might have asked why a farm which already had a well between the house and the barn, wanted a second well at the edge of a swampy field, bordering the reds and yellow trees lining Onondaga creek to the north. But they were happy to have the work on such a cool day. Henry Nichols just picked up a shovel and started digging, while Gideon grabbed a bucket to tote the soil away for dumping. With just one man able to handle a shovel, it was slow work, even allowing for the loose rich black soil. It took two hours for Nichols to clear three feet of earth, and before eleven Nichols' shovel clanged against a rock. Amazingly for this region, it was the first large stone encountered, and the pair began to clear the dirt to discover the size and shape of the obstruction. They stopped when a huge white toe emerged into the light.

Gideon ran to fetch Mr. Newell, who, with a third witness, ... er workman..., was gathering stones for the lining of his new well. And as a stroke of luck, a fourth witness, John Haynes, a local farmer on his way to attend a fair in Syracuse - 12 miles to the north - just happened by at this moment. All five men rushed to the back of the Newell farm to see the toe. Newell and Haynes jumped into the hole and began to assist in the clearing of more soil.   Quickly a pair of feet emerged into the sunlight. One of the men - I suspect it was Hayes – observed, “I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!” The digging became frenetic. Hayes said, “as fast as they cleared the body toward the head, I cleared the dirt off about up to the hand on the belly.”

By sunset that Saturday evening, people from surrounding farms were walking over to the Newell farm to have a look. The Syracuse Journal described the excitement. "Men left their work, women caught up their babies, and children in all numbers hurried to the scene..."  Sunday brought larger crowds, as people stopped by on their way to and from church. And, of course, John Haynes carried word of the discovery to the city of Syracuse. On Monday, 18 October 1869 the “Syracuse Standard” published the news under the headline “PETRIFIED”, and described the Giant in detail. “It has been...examined by physicians, and they assert positively that it must have been once a living giant. The veins, eyeballs, muscles, tendons of the heel, and cords of the neck are all very fully exhibited...Mr. Newell proposes now to allow it to rest as found until examined by scientific men. It certainly is one of the connecting links between the past and present races, and of great value.” The telegraph spread the story in minutes across the country, “A NEW WONDER” and “THE PETRIFIED GIANT” Added the Syracuse paper, “ The story has passed from one to another till very many, probably ten thousand of our citizens, have already heard of it.”

Monday morning the look-y-loos where met by large tent (above)  erected over the giant, which a “Dr. Boynton” declared was actually a statue, “of a Caucasian. The features are finely cut and are in perfect harmony.”. To enter the tent and gaze upon the giant for fifteen minutes, visitors now paid 25 cents. Mr. Newell took in $220 that Monday. And with 400 visitors a day making the trek down from the rail head at Syracuse, the crowds kept growing, the average day's take was well over $500. One visitor observed, "The roads were crowded with buggies, carriages and even omnibuses from the city, and with lumber-wagons from the farms — all loaded with passengers.”. That second Sunday after its discovery, 2,600 curious viewers shuffled through the tent, now paying 50  cents each..

The visitor quoted above, Mr. Andrew White, tried to maintain his scientific detachment once he was inside, but “with the subdued light from the roof of the tent...and the limbs contorted as if in a death struggle...An air of great solemnity pervaded the place. Visitors hardly spoke above a whisper."  The town's one hotel did a month's worth of business every day. Stands to sell sweet apple cider and gingerbread suddenly appeared, to tend to the crowds, a few even renting space on Mr. Newell's farm. Pamphlets appeared (above), almost magically, detailing theories about where the Cardiff Giant had come from. Almost unnoticed in the crowds, George Hull slipped into the village, as did H.B. Martin. They brought with them Colonel J.W. Wood, one of P.T. Barnum's competitors.

Joseph H. Wood (above) claimed the title of Colonel thanks to his experience as an 18 year old  in the 1835 “war” between Ohio and Michigan territory. He spent the next 15 years operating a “traveling museum” out of Cincinnati, then opened a stationary one in Philadelphia's old Bolivar Hotel. When that burned down in 1857, he opened a new one in St. Louis, and with a partner in 1859 opened “The Great Burlesque Circus - A Pantomimic and Acrobatic Exhibition of Dogs and Monkeys” in Chicago.

In 1862 J.H. Wood opened another museum (above) on East Clark Street in Chicago. Observed the Colonel's own publicity, it was “remarkable for its specialties.” For a mere 25 cent entrance fee, you could gaze upon “...more than sixty cases of birds, reptiles, insects, and objects from around the world, all arranged somewhat haphazardly.” On display was a model of the Parthenon, Daniel Boone’s rifle, mummies and a 96 foot long whale skeleton. Some of his exhibits were even real. “Col. Wood, the proprietor, knows he has a good thing, and that he does not hide it in the dark.”

His arrival within a week of the “discovery” of the Cardiff Giant, as it was now being called, testified to Wood's deep involvement in the creation of the fraud. And it guaranteed the rapid collapse of the entire scheme.

- 30 -