Yesterday morning, 8 am it was 22 degrees, and it took 15 minutes to get up the driveway; it was a sheet of ice.
However, on wednesday, it was 42 at noon, and sunny, so I decided to take "Jimi", the '80 XS, on a trip to Cardiff, New York,
the "birthplace" of The Cardiff Giant". I mounted the Spitfire windshield to help with the cold blast.
On October 16, 1869, workers in Cardiff, New York, unearthed what appeared to be the body of an ancient 10-foot-tall petrified man. Over the next several months, people flocked from all over the Northeast to catch a glimpse of the so-called “Cardiff Giant,” and many hailed it as one of the most significant archeological discoveries of the 19th century.
In the center of this diminutive village of Cardiff, just off Rt. 20, there is a scenic park, in my opinion a great cultural small town tradition.
I was determined to find the exact place where they dug up this stone treasure, so I drove until I found a local resident to speak to. Nancy Gillespie was taking out her trash, and she had an old wool hunting sock on her head for warmth. She was very happy to tell me her family history of involvement with the discovery of 'The Giant".
It was apparently just a 1/4 mile away, on Tully Farms Road, and there was a fading marker planted at the spot.
"The seed for what would become one of the 19th century’s most elaborate hoaxes first planted itself in George Hull’s mind in 1867. A cigar maker by trade, Hull was also a staunch atheist and skeptic, and during a business trip to Iowa, he became locked in a theological debate with a revivalist preacher. Hull later claimed he was bothered by the preacher’s literalist reading of the Bible, in particular a passage from the Book of Genesis that states “there were giants in the earth in those days.” As he lay in bed later that night, Hull wondered if it might be possible to dupe the faithful by making a stone giant “and passing it off as a petrified man.” If done right, he mused, the scam would allow him to strike a blow against religion and make a pretty penny along the way.
Over the next two years, Hull spent nearly $3,000 bringing his giant to life. He began by traveling to Fort Dodge, Iowa, where he secured a 5-ton block of gypsum by claiming it would be used for a statue of the late Abraham Lincoln. Hull then shipped the slab to a Chicago marble dealer who had agreed to help with the scheme in exchange for a piece of the profits. With Hull posing as a model, a pair of sculptors spent the late summer of 1868 fashioning the gypsum into an artificial anthropological wonder. The statue took the form of a naked man lying on his back with his right arm grasping at his stomach, one leg crossed over the other and a face with a mysterious half-smile. The workers doused the exterior with sulfuric acid to give an aged, eroded look, and Hull even drove pins into the body to replicate skin pores. When finished, the colossus stood more than 10 feet tall and weighed nearly 3,000 pounds.
Hull needed a place to bury his giant, and he eventually settled on Cardiff, New York, that also happened to be the home of a distant relative and farmer named William “Stub” Newell. After cutting Newell in on the deal and swearing him to secrecy, Hull shipped the giant to his property. On a chilly night in November 1868, the men buried the behemoth near Newell’s barn, wedging it under roots to create the illusion that it had rested beneath the dirt for centuries. Hull then returned to his home in nearby Binghamton. Nearly a year would pass before he finally wrote Newell and instructed him to resurrect the giant. On October 16, 1869, Newell put the plan into action by hiring a pair of unsuspecting workers to dig a well near his barn. The men didn’t have to dig far before their shovels hit what appeared to be a stone foot. In a matter of minutes, the stunned laborers had excavated the body of a massive, supine man. “I declare,” one of the men supposedly said. “Some old Indian has been buried here!”
Cardiff’s prehistoric man made a splash the likes of which had never been seen in rural New York. “A NEW WONDER,” read the headline in the Syracuse Daily Standard. Another paper hailed the find as “a singular discovery.” When the crowds continued to grow, Newell covered the giant with a white tent and began charging 50 cents for admission. Some 2,500 people came during the exhibition’s first week alone. Newell brushed off offers to buy the giant until George Hull arrived in Cardiff a few days later. After a brief powwow, the conspirators agreed it was time to cash in. When a syndicate of businessmen offered $30,000 for a three-fourths stake, Newell sold.
Over the next few weeks, more experts converged on Cardiff to inspect the “new wonder.” New York State Geologist James Hall and Rochester University professor Henry Ward were among the many to throw their weight behind the statue theory, with Hall christening it, “the most remarkable object yet brought to light in our country.”
By early 1870, the Cardiff Giant had turned from a subject of fascination into one of ridicule. Some people still argued for its antiquity, but new exposés were cropping up all the time, and even George Hull began publicly bragging about having engineered a hoax. The ruse finally crumbled that February, when newspapers printed confessions from the Chicago sculptors who had first chiseled the giant into being."
Today, the Giant lays in Cooperstown, NY for the public to view.
The marker is kinda cool:
To cap off the ride, I went to Micky D's for coffee and cookies, a nice idea suggested by.........was it Mr. TW?
However, on wednesday, it was 42 at noon, and sunny, so I decided to take "Jimi", the '80 XS, on a trip to Cardiff, New York,
the "birthplace" of The Cardiff Giant". I mounted the Spitfire windshield to help with the cold blast.
On October 16, 1869, workers in Cardiff, New York, unearthed what appeared to be the body of an ancient 10-foot-tall petrified man. Over the next several months, people flocked from all over the Northeast to catch a glimpse of the so-called “Cardiff Giant,” and many hailed it as one of the most significant archeological discoveries of the 19th century.
In the center of this diminutive village of Cardiff, just off Rt. 20, there is a scenic park, in my opinion a great cultural small town tradition.
I was determined to find the exact place where they dug up this stone treasure, so I drove until I found a local resident to speak to. Nancy Gillespie was taking out her trash, and she had an old wool hunting sock on her head for warmth. She was very happy to tell me her family history of involvement with the discovery of 'The Giant".
"The seed for what would become one of the 19th century’s most elaborate hoaxes first planted itself in George Hull’s mind in 1867. A cigar maker by trade, Hull was also a staunch atheist and skeptic, and during a business trip to Iowa, he became locked in a theological debate with a revivalist preacher. Hull later claimed he was bothered by the preacher’s literalist reading of the Bible, in particular a passage from the Book of Genesis that states “there were giants in the earth in those days.” As he lay in bed later that night, Hull wondered if it might be possible to dupe the faithful by making a stone giant “and passing it off as a petrified man.” If done right, he mused, the scam would allow him to strike a blow against religion and make a pretty penny along the way.
Over the next two years, Hull spent nearly $3,000 bringing his giant to life. He began by traveling to Fort Dodge, Iowa, where he secured a 5-ton block of gypsum by claiming it would be used for a statue of the late Abraham Lincoln. Hull then shipped the slab to a Chicago marble dealer who had agreed to help with the scheme in exchange for a piece of the profits. With Hull posing as a model, a pair of sculptors spent the late summer of 1868 fashioning the gypsum into an artificial anthropological wonder. The statue took the form of a naked man lying on his back with his right arm grasping at his stomach, one leg crossed over the other and a face with a mysterious half-smile. The workers doused the exterior with sulfuric acid to give an aged, eroded look, and Hull even drove pins into the body to replicate skin pores. When finished, the colossus stood more than 10 feet tall and weighed nearly 3,000 pounds.
Hull needed a place to bury his giant, and he eventually settled on Cardiff, New York, that also happened to be the home of a distant relative and farmer named William “Stub” Newell. After cutting Newell in on the deal and swearing him to secrecy, Hull shipped the giant to his property. On a chilly night in November 1868, the men buried the behemoth near Newell’s barn, wedging it under roots to create the illusion that it had rested beneath the dirt for centuries. Hull then returned to his home in nearby Binghamton. Nearly a year would pass before he finally wrote Newell and instructed him to resurrect the giant. On October 16, 1869, Newell put the plan into action by hiring a pair of unsuspecting workers to dig a well near his barn. The men didn’t have to dig far before their shovels hit what appeared to be a stone foot. In a matter of minutes, the stunned laborers had excavated the body of a massive, supine man. “I declare,” one of the men supposedly said. “Some old Indian has been buried here!”
Cardiff’s prehistoric man made a splash the likes of which had never been seen in rural New York. “A NEW WONDER,” read the headline in the Syracuse Daily Standard. Another paper hailed the find as “a singular discovery.” When the crowds continued to grow, Newell covered the giant with a white tent and began charging 50 cents for admission. Some 2,500 people came during the exhibition’s first week alone. Newell brushed off offers to buy the giant until George Hull arrived in Cardiff a few days later. After a brief powwow, the conspirators agreed it was time to cash in. When a syndicate of businessmen offered $30,000 for a three-fourths stake, Newell sold.
Over the next few weeks, more experts converged on Cardiff to inspect the “new wonder.” New York State Geologist James Hall and Rochester University professor Henry Ward were among the many to throw their weight behind the statue theory, with Hall christening it, “the most remarkable object yet brought to light in our country.”
By early 1870, the Cardiff Giant had turned from a subject of fascination into one of ridicule. Some people still argued for its antiquity, but new exposés were cropping up all the time, and even George Hull began publicly bragging about having engineered a hoax. The ruse finally crumbled that February, when newspapers printed confessions from the Chicago sculptors who had first chiseled the giant into being."
Today, the Giant lays in Cooperstown, NY for the public to view.
The marker is kinda cool:
To cap off the ride, I went to Micky D's for coffee and cookies, a nice idea suggested by.........was it Mr. TW?
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It was just a mill and a house and next door was the Greyhound station and across the street was a drive-in movie. Vastly different now, like a mill resort set in the middle of a megalopolis.
Not bad for Nov 27th in Wiscoland.
