The Giant and How He Humbugged America

by Jim Murphy

  Johann Beringer thought he had discovered ancient stones that proved that God had created the earth. (AMS Historical/Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bologna)

  Beringer was beside himself with joy, believing he had found physical proof that God had created the earth and that “God, the Father of Nature, would fill our minds with His praises and perfections radiating from these wondrous effects.” The truth was that the stones had been manufactured by the school’s geography professor and a librarian, who both believed that Beringer was a pompous windbag who needed to be taught a lesson.

  The two pranksters realized they had gone too far when Beringer announced he was planning to publish a book describing the meaning of his remarkable find. They confessed what they had done, but Beringer refused to believe them and had his book published anyway. Months later, Beringer realized that he had in fact been duped, but it was too late. His reputation was forever tarnished. As for the two who carried out the scheme, one was fired from his job, while the other was demoted and denied access to the library he had once run.

  In 1860, archaeologist ­David Wyrick was digging through Native American burial grounds near Newark, Ohio, when he came across what have come to be called the Newark Holy Stones. Each stone had Hebrew inscribed in them, and Wyrick was convinced they proved that nonnative ­people had visited the area hundreds, if not thousands, of years before Columbus.

  ­David Wyrick claimed that his discovery of the Newark Holy Stones showed that ­people from Europe had visited America thousands of years before Columbus. This one, known as “The Decalogue,” shows Moses in a long robe with a shortened version of the Ten Commandments carved around the border. (Courtesy, Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum)

  Wyrick wrote a book about the Newark Holy Stones, complete with woodcuts of the sacred objects. But even before publication of his book, experts were ridiculing them as frauds, pointing to the many spelling errors. Some ­people suspect that Wyrick perpetrated the fraud to enhance his career. Others believe a local Episcopal minister planted them, hoping to convince the world that Adam and Eve were the parents to all races and to suggest that all ­people were indeed created equal.

  Charles Dawson was an amateur archaeologist who very desperately wanted to be taken seriously by real archaeologists, especially those who were members of the prestigious British Royal Academy. It was then his good fortune in 1912 to discover fossilized bone fragments in a gravel pit in Piltdown, a village in East Sussex, En­gland. Dawson immediately took the fragments to the keeper of geology at London’s Natural History Museum, Sir Arthur Smith Woodward.

  Charles Dawson discussing his Piltdown Man with a group of learned scientists. It would take decades for his discovery to be exposed as a fraud. (Natural History Museum, London)

  Woodward was impressed and soon joined Dawson at Piltdown to help uncover even more pieces of a skull and jawbone. Other scientists began studying the fossils and came to the conclusion that they were from an ancient ancestor of humans some 500,000 years old. Eager scientists named the creature Eoanthropus dawsoni (Dawson’s Dawn Man) and declared him “the earliest specimen of true humanity yet discovered.”

  There were a few doubters, of course. The Smithsonian Institution’s Gerrit S. Miller came to the conclusion that if the jawbone and cranium were actually combined, it would create a freakish creature never found in real life. He was shouted down by colleagues, and so what came to be known as the Piltdown Man was considered a genuine link to our past and studied seriously for over forty years.

  It took Joseph Weiner, a professor of physical anthropology at Oxford University, to unearth the fraud in 1950. It turned out that these “ancient” fossils were actually a medieval man’s skull, a five-hundred-year-old orangutan jaw, and the teeth of a chimpanzee, all cleverly pieced together. It was, in Weiner’s words, “a most elaborate and carefully prepared hoax . . . so unscrupulous and inexplicable, as to find no parallel in paleontological history.” Dawson died in 1916, firmly believing that his name would go down in history as the discoverer of the missing link between apes and humans; instead his hoax is remembered as “an ugly trick played by a warped and unscrupulous mind.”

  Shinichi Fujimura appeared to have a blessed career as a leading amateur archaeologist, taking part in over 180 digs in northern Japan. He almost always found important artifacts, their age becoming increasingly older. His finds extended the Japa­nese Paleolithic period from approximately 30,000 years to about 300,000 years BC.

  There were doubters, including Shizuo Oda and Charles T. Keally, who wrote that “no proven artifacts of human origin predating 30,000 BC” exist. Eyebrows were raised by this and other similar claims, but Fujimura was so famous and revered in the field that the doubters were easily dismissed as jealous rivals.

  Shinichi Fujimura talking to reporters about another of his remarkable finds. (© Kyodo News International)

  Then, on October 23, 2000, Fujimura and his team announced another startling discovery, a find that pushed human settlements in northern Japan back to 570,000 years BC. The field of archaeology was once again abuzz with praise for Fujimura—until a series of photographs appeared in the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper. They show Fujimura digging holes and planting artifacts one day before his team dug them up. Fujimura confessed to the deception, explaining that he was “possessed by an uncontrollable urge” and that the things he planted were from his own collection. He knew that no accurate way existed to test the age of the items he planted and guessed that placing them in very ancient strata would suggest they were themselves very ancient. Fujimura, who was said to have had “divine hands” because of his astonishing success rate, has since retired entirely from the business of digging up ancient artifacts.

  In the fall of 2008, Bernie Madoff, a renowned and esteemed financier and former president of the New York Stock Exchange, was arrested for the biggest Ponzi scheme in financial history. Over the course of many years, he had managed to bilk investors in his financial management business out of between 18 and 68 billion (yes, billion) dollars. Most of these investors had no idea that he was taking in and using their money and not investing it as he claimed. Instead, he created false accounting records to cover up what he was ­really doing. Like many people, I was appalled and fascinated by the monumental size of Madoff’s theft and even considered writing a book about it, but hesitated. While a “ripped from the headlines” sort of story would be immediate and might grab people’s attention, I knew that all of the facts (such as who exactly knew about his scheme and why some obvious warning signs were ignored by regulatory officials) would take years to unearth and interpret. Even a thoughtfully done instant book would lack historical perspective and be more of a glorified magazine piece (and might well be out-of-date pretty quickly) than a book that might be accurate for years.

  Then I thought I might write about Charles Ponzi and the scheme he cooked up in 1919 that netted him over 2 million dollars and linked his name forever with other such “Ponzi” schemes. But here’s where two additional problems became clear. I did not find either Madoff or Ponzi very interesting people—they were/are dull little men—and writing about financial dealings lacks drama and action.

  Which was when I remembered the Cardiff Giant. Financially, it was small potatoes when compared to what Ponzi and Madoff did, but the fact that the giant was so convincing to so many people, even the supposed experts, was amazing and instructive, and the large cast of characters includes some truly unusual and eccentric folk.

  I began doing research just as winter was setting in and decided to put off visiting the scene of the event in New York State until warmer spring weather returned. So I spent the winter reading every­thing I ­could find about the Cardiff Giant and the people involved. I located many of these books and articles on the Internet and was able to either download them to my computer or purchase them from antique-book sites. Among the sites I used were www.ancestry.com; news.google.com/archivesearch; Google Book Search; newspaperarchive.com;
www.bookfinder.com; and xooleanswers.com. By the time warmer May temperatures arrived, I had not only read a great deal about the incident and the times, but had also begun thinking about how I would write the text. And I was ready to travel.

  Traveling to the region where a book’s events took place is important and has many benefits. For instance, the only way to read John Rankin’s The Giantmaker was to visit the Broome County Historical Society in Binghamton, New York, where they have a manuscript copy of it. Stops at other historical societies let me study newspapers from the time in a careful page-by-page way and to discover other trea­sures such as pamphlets and flyers and photographs. At the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown, I was able to read Scott Tribble’s doctoral thesis about the Cardiff Giant, out of which grew his very informative book, A Colossal Hoax. Of course, I went to the Farmers’ Museum (just across the street from the Historical Association) to see the Cardiff Giant up close. He’s tucked away in a corner behind a wall covered with pictures and text that tell about his rapid rise to fame and just as rapid fall from favor. He’s somewhat worse for wear, but he is impressive and I ­could imagine what it must have been like for Newell’s well-diggers to unearth him.

  Naturally, traveling to Onondaga County literally let me see the landscape and buildings (many from the nineteenth century survive) and helped me to conjure up what the area might have been like over one hundred years ago. In the case of Cardiff, New York, it seems that things ­haven’t changed very much. Granted, the roads are paved and there are TV satellite dishes here and there, but the population is about the same as it was in 1869. And while most of the agricultural fields are overgrown with weeds, the contours of the land remain unchanged. This is especially true when you come across the historical marker on Tully Farms Road just across from where Newell’s farm once was.

  (Nancy Mueller/HMdb.org)

  If you close your eyes, you can almost hear the clomp of horses’ hooves and the creaking of wagon wheels that greeted Stub Newell in the days after his great discovery.

  I ­could not have done this research without the generous, thoughtful help of many experts. I especially want to thank Sarah Kozma of the Onondaga Historical Association Museum and Research Center; Gerald Smith of the Broome County Historical Society; Erin Richardson, Director of Collections, New York State Historical Association; Anne Smith, Town of Lafayette historian; L. Jane Tracy, Town of Onondaga historian; and Lynn M. Fisher, Town of Tully historian. If I managed to bring alive this odd, intriguing incident from our country’s past, it is due to these dedicated and knowledgeable ­people’s direction.

  I: The Discovery

  Details about the arrival of Gideon Emmons and Henry Nichols at Stub Newell’s farm, the general terrain, the digging of the well, and the discovery of the giant come from Syracuse Daily Standard, October 18 and 30, 1869.

  Information about Emmons’s wartime injury was from the Marathon Mirror, May 13, 1865.

  A very nice discussion of the Onondaga Stone Giants can be found in Anthony Wayne Wonderley, At the Font of Marvelous: Exploring Oral Narrative and Mythic Imagery of the Iroquois and Their Neighbors (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2009), pp. 98–104.

  Newell’s fear that a murder may have been committed is from Syracuse Daily Journal, October 20, 1869.

  “I declare . . . ” Anonymous, The American Goliah, p. 3.

  “They have found . . . ” Anonymous, The Cardiff Giant Humbug, p. 26.

  “It is a foot . . . ” Anonymous, The Cardiff Giant Humbug, p. 26.

  II: Word Spreads

  Details about the first visitors to Newell’s farm, Billy Houghton’s theory that they had found a petrified human, and the first offers to purchase the discovery were from Syracuse Daily Journal, October 18 and 20, 1869; Rankin, The Giantmaker, pp. 125–129; and Anonymous, The Cardiff Giant Humbug, p. 26.

  Information about marine and plant fossils in northwestern New York came from the Rochester Academy of Science: http://www.rasny.org/fossil/NYGeoHistory.htm, and the New York Paleontological Society.

  Information about Joshua V. Clark and his quote are from Joshua V. H. Clark, Onondaga, or Reminiscences of Earlier and Later Times (Syracuse, NY: Stoddard and Babcock, 1849), Vol. 2, pp. 266–268.

  Giants appear in numerous books of the Bible, including Genesis 6:4–5, Numbers 13:28–33, Deuteronomy 2:10, Joshua 12:4, and 1 Samuel 17:4.

  Here and throughout to determine the value of an 1869 dollar in today’s money, I used MeasuringWorth.com, a website that was founded by Lawrence H. Officer, Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois, Chicago. It can be found at: http://www.measuringworth.com/ppowerus/result.php.

  III: The Scientists’ Opinions

  How John Clark and Silas Forbes helped spread news about the discovery and about the arrival of visitors to Newell’s farm on Sunday can be found in Syracuse Daily Journal, October 18 and 20, 1869.

  A description of the examination of the giant by the four local doctors comes from Rankin, The Giantmaker, p. 136.

  The first mention of the use of fig leaves for modesty appear in the Bible, Genesis 3:7, after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit. “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.” For the most part, however, Greek and Roman artists did not use a fig leaf when depicting the human body, and neither did most European artists until the mid-1500s. That was when Catholic and Protestant church leaders spoke out against the “sinfulness of the flesh,” and many masterpieces of art, including works by Raphael, Rubens, Titian, da Vinci, and Michelangelo, were redone to include fig leaves. This tradition continued well into the twentieth century.

  John Boynton’s life and achievements are detailed in Syracuse Daily Standard, October 18, 1869, and Syracuse Daily Journal, October 21, 1890. His examination of the stone giant is described in Rankin, The Giantmaker, pp. 142–143.

  “The chief topic of conversation . . . ” Syracuse Daily Standard, October 18, 1869.

  “For modesty’s sake, an improvised ‘fig leaf’ was kept over the loins . . . ” Syracuse Daily Standard, October 20, 1869.

  IV: Open for Business

  The establishment of Newell’s new business on Monday, accompanied by the arrival of large crowds, is described in Syracuse Daily Journal, Syracuse Daily Courier, and Syracuse Daily Standard, October 18, 1869.

  Details about Billy Houghton’s show come from Rankin, The Giantmaker, pp. 148–149, and Syracuse Daily Courier, October 20, 1869.

  Information about Civil War casualties comes from James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, New York, 1988 Oxford University Press, p. 854. Details about Jay Gould, James Fisk, and Andrew Johnson’s troubled administration were found in John A Garraty, ed, The Young Reader’s Companion to American History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994), pp. 456–457, 840, 842.

  Newell’s various secret business dealings are from Rankin, The Giantmaker, pp. 149–161.

  “An air of great solemnity . . . ” White, Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Vol. 2, p. 469.

  “A man stands at the mouth of the excavation . . . ” Syracuse Daily Courier, October 20, 1869.

  “jest one feller’s opinion” Syracuse Daily Courier, October 20, 1869.

  “The marrow of his bones . . . ” White, Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Vol. 2, p. 472.

  “Nothing in the world . . . ” White, Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Vol. 2, p. 472.

  “A kindly benevolent smile . . . ” New En­gland Homestead, October 30, 1869.

  “A NEW WONDER . . . ” Syracuse Daily Standard, October 18, 1869.

  “IMPORTANT DISCOVERY . . . ” Syracuse Daily Courier, October 18, 1869.

  “Compared with the Cardiff . . . ” New York Commercial Advertiser, November 5, 1869.

  “extremely unpleasant, uncomfortable [wet] weather” Syracuse Journal, October 22, 1869.

  “The roads . . . cro
wded with buggies . . . ” White, Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White, Vol. 2, p. 469.

  V: Changes

  Information about the sale of part ownerships in the Cardiff Giant was found in: Rankin, The Giantmaker, pp. 149–165; Tribble, A Colossal Hoax, pp. 80–84; and Syracuse Daily Journal, July 7, 1873.

  One member of the group that bought part ownership in the giant was ­David Hannum, one of the largest landowners in the area, a shrewd businessman, and a very successful and not always honest horse trader. Even so, Hannum was a charmer, as one biographer noted, “His good nature, however, always stood him in good stead, and many a time the loser went away feeling satisfied just because of Hannum’s amusing personality.” For more on Hannum, see Vance, The Real ­David Harum, pp. 21–23. Incidentally, P. T. Barnum is usually credited with first saying “There’s a sucker born ­every minute,” though most historians now believe Hannum was the first to utter it. See: http://www.historybuff.com/library/refbarnum.html.

  Joseph H. Wood, P. T. Barnum, and many other individuals set up private natural history museums in the nineteenth century. Most of these were a strange combination of real and interesting objects, fabricated creatures based on myths and rumors, and various freaks of nature, both human and animal. Interesting books on this phenomenon are Bondeson, The Fejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History; Dennett, Weird and Wonderful; and Thompson, The Mystery and Lore of Monsters.

  Descriptions of the new show or­ga­nized by Colonel Joseph H. Wood were from Syracuse Daily Standard, Syracuse Daily Courier, and Syracuse Daily Journal, October 25, 1869.