Giants of Watertown NY

In the rolling landscapes of Watertown and Jefferson County, New York, a series of 19th-century discoveries once fueled a local obsession with "Biblical Giants." During the mid-to-late 1800s, as settlers cleared the land and expanded the city, they frequently stumbled upon ancient burial mounds and earthworks that whispered of a forgotten, colossal past. Here is the story of the giants that once supposedly roamed the shores of Lake Ontario and the banks of the Black River. The "Anakim" of the North Country In the 1800s, many Americans held a literal interpretation of the Bible, specifically Genesis 6:4: "There were giants in the earth in those days." When local farmers in Watertown and nearby Ellisburg began unearthing skeletons that measured seven, eight, and even nine feet tall, they didn’t just see archaeological finds—they saw confirmation of the Nephilim. One of the most cited historical records comes from the work of early regional historians like Franklin B. Hough, who documented the "Ancient Monuments" of Jefferson County. In several instances, workers digging foundations for Watertown’s expanding industry reportedly found human remains of "prodigious size." One account describes a skull so large that it could be placed over the head of an average man like a helmet. The Great Mound of Ellisburg Just south of Watertown, in the town of Ellisburg, one of the most famous "giant" sites was discovered. Local histories record that while excavating a trench near a stream, settlers found a mass burial site containing dozens of skeletons. The witnesses claimed these individuals were part of a "race of giants." The thigh bones (femurs) were said to be several inches longer than those of the tallest modern men. Local newspapers at the time speculated that these were the descendants of the biblical Anakim or a "lost race" that predated the Native American tribes known to the settlers. The Cardiff Connection The fascination with giants in Upstate New York reached a fever pitch in 1869 with the discovery of the Cardiff Giant. While found south of Watertown in Onondaga County, the news rocked the entire region. Two workers digging a well unearthed a 10-foot-tall "petrified man." The giant was hailed by local clergy as a biblical miracle. However, the Cardiff Giant was eventually revealed to be a massive hoax—a gypsum statue carved by George Hull to mock a fundamentalist preacher. Despite the hoax, the "true" skeletal finds in Watertown remained a point of serious debate for decades, as they were actual bone, not stone. Where Did the Giants Go? Modern science offers a more grounded explanation for the "Watertown Giants." Archaeologists now know that the region was home to the Hopewell and Adena cultures, known as the "Mound Builders." These civilizations often buried their elite in mounds with great ceremony. While some individuals in these populations may have been tall, many "giant" reports were the result of: Exaggeration: The 19th-century "Penny Press" loved sensational stories to sell papers. Mismeasurement: When a skeleton decays, the joints separate. An amateur measuring a "collapsed" skeleton might record a 6-foot man as 8 feet long. Mastodon Bones: Farmers often found prehistoric megafauna bones and, lacking anatomical knowledge, assumed they were human-like "giants." A Lingering Mystery Today, the mounds around Watertown have largely been leveled by agriculture and urban sprawl. The skeletons reported in the 1800s were often kept as curiosities in private collections or sent to the Smithsonian, where many claim they "vanished" from the public record. Whether they were truly biblical giants or a tall, noble lineage of indigenous people, the legends remain a shadow in Watertown’s history—a reminder of a time when the soil of New York seemed to hold the secrets of the ancient world.