a.k.a. V.J.

We all have that super-credulous person in our lives who is the first to share unsourced hearsay passing itself off as “news,” too-good-to be true product giveaways, obviously doctored photos, and seemingly impossible-to-believe misinformation on social media. Twenty years ago, they were filling your email inbox with nonsense viral email forwards they had been duped by. Basically, they are the whole reason the snopes.com website was started. Well, if you and that person had lived back in 1869, they would probably have ridden their horse at full gallop to your house in order to breathlessly tell you the news about the remains of a bona fide ancient giant that had just been unearthed in a little flyspeck town south of Syracuse called Cardiff.

The Cardiff Giant was one of the great hoaxes of archaeology and of American history. Here is a summary of the “finding” via Wikipedia:

 It was a 10-foot-tall (3.0 m), roughly 3,000 pound purported “petrified man”, uncovered on October 16, 1869, by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. “Stub” Newell, in Cardiff, New York. He covered the giant with a tent and it soon became an attraction site.

The giant was a creation of a Binghamton tobacconist and religious skeptic named George Hull, who planted the fake fossil in order to prove a point about how gullible the public was. On that last point, he seems to have largely succeeded. Before the whole thing was debunked, the giant had become a sensation. It drew so much attention that P.T. Barnum tried to buy the figure before eventually creating an unauthorized copy and putting his fake of a fake on display in New York City.

As much of a stir as the Cardiff Giant caused in its time, the story seems to have gone under the radar over the years. I say that, because this all happened less than hour away from my hometown, but I never heard or read anything about it until I was well into adulthood. It seems like the lore of the giant should have been a bigger deal, at least locally.

Until this weekend, I didn’t know that the Cardiff Giant is still on display. During a trip to Cooperstown, N.Y., I learned that the fugazi giant is now housed at the Fenimore Farm & Country Village attraction. We were going to Fenimore Farm anyway, but knowing that I’d be able to see the 19th century hoax for myself was an added incentive to stop in.

Here are a few photos of the Cardiff Giant in his current resting place along the shores of Otsego Lake.