Licking County OhArchives News.....About Giants - The Ohio Democrat - 1882 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/oh/ohfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joyce Robinson JAR422@aol.com on Monday, December 12, 2005 12:49 AM About Giants - The Ohio Democrat - 1882 Transcribed without making changes to spelling and grammar. Transcribed by Joyce Robinson The Ohio Democrat Dated June 20, 1882 ABOUT GIANTS. The St. Louis Republican has a lengthy article about Giants. We omit that portion of the article relating to the huge fellows of mythology and tradition, many of whom are said to have been anywhere from ten feet to sixty, eighty, an hundred, and more than an hundred feet high, and come down to those of later times, whose is as well known as any other facts of modern history. The Republican says: Leaving the domain of fable and legend for that of real life, we find some very formidable giants. The Emperor Maximus was nine feet high; he generally ate forty pounds of flesh and drank six gallons of wine every day; his shoe was a foot longer than that of any other man; and he was in the habit of using his wife's bracelet for a thumb ring. It is well, perhaps, to take a little salt with the story that he could not move. Nicetas asserts quite positively that Andronicus II was ten feet high. John Middleton, born at Hale, in Landshire, in the reign of James I., was nine feet three inches; his hand was seventeen inches long and eight and one-half inches broad. Vanderbrook says he saw a black man at Congo nine feet high. Charles Byrne, or O'Brien, the Irish giant (1761 - 1783), was eight feet four inches; and Murphy, contemporary with O'Brien, was eight feet seven and one-half inches. It is said of Charlemagne, who was nearly eight feet tall, that he could squeeze together three horseshoes at once with his hands. William Evans, porter to Charles I., was eight feet at death. Francis Sheridan an Irishman, who went by the name of Big Frank, was seven feet eight inches; weight, twenty-two stone; girth around the chest, fifty-eight inches. He died in 1870. J. H. Riechart, of Friedberg, whose father and mother were both giants, was eight feet three inches in height. Gilly, a Swede, exhibited in the early part of the nineteenth century, was eight feet high. Loushkin, the Russian giant, and Drum Major of the Imperial Guards, measured eight feet three inches. Maximilian Miller, the Saxon giant, was eight feet; his hand measured twelve inches, and his forefinger was nine inches long. Among other giants in real life, but who are now dead, the following may be mentioned: Heinreich Osen, Norwegian, 7 feet 5 inches Joseph Bruce, English, 7 feet 8 inches Cornelius Magrath, English, 7 feet 8 inches Edmund Mellon, Irich, 7 feet 6 inches Sam McDonald, Scotch, 6 feet 10 inches James McDonald, Irish, 7 feet 6 inches Louis, French, 7 feet 6 inches Harold Haroada, Norwegian, 7 feet 9 inches Eleizeque, Spanish, 7 feet 10 inches John Ausby, English, 7 feet 9 inches Bradley, English, 7 feet 8 inches Henry Blacker, English, 7 feet 4 inches Edward Bamford, Irish, 7 feet 4 inches Alice Gordon, English, 7 feet Robert Hale, English, 7 feet 7 inches La Pierre, Danish, 7 feet 1 inch Salmeron, Mexican, 7 feet 6 inches Miles Darden, North Carolina, 7 feet 7 inches Colonel NOAH ORR, 7 ft 4 inches; recently died at Marysville, O. Chang, the Chinese giant, is seven feet six inches high. James Gilbert, a mulatto of Chatham, North Carolina, who travels with Barnum's show, is seven feet. Undoubtedly the most wonderful of living giants is Captain BATES, the Kentuckian, who now resides on a farm near Seville, Ohio, when he is not on exhibition; and Mrs. Bates is the most colossal of the giantesses. The Captain is thirty-four years of age, weighs five hundred and twenty- six pounds, is seven feet eleven inches high, measures seventy inches around the chest, and wears a No. 10 hat, a thirty-inch collar, and a seventeen boot. Mrs. Bates tips the scales at four hundred and eighty pounds, is thirty-one years old, and as tall as her husband, and sports silk dresses of eighty yards apiece. ==== OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List ====