History and Provenance

George Hull, a tobacconist and religious sceptic, later said the idea came from a quarrel with a Methodist minister over the literal truth of the biblical giants. In 1868 he arranged for a large block of gypsum to be quarried near Fort Dodge, Iowa, and shipped to Chicago, where stonecutters sworn to secrecy carved it into a giant man; the surface was treated with acid and pricked with needles to simulate age and pores. Hull had the figure buried on the Cardiff farm of his cousin William Newell.

In October 1869 Newell set men to dig a well over the spot, the giant was unearthed, and crowds poured in to see it, many paying admission. A syndicate bought a controlling interest, and P. T. Barnum, rebuffed in an attempt to buy the original, exhibited a copy of his own. Mounting scrutiny and Hull's confession in December 1869 ended the deception, and the giant passed through various owners before reaching The Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown.