In 1835, showman P.T. Barnum purchased an enslaved woman named Joice Heth and presented her to audiences as George Washington’s 161-year-old former nurse.
Was she real?
Barnum had proof!
When he bought Joice, he was given a document purporting to show that in 1727, five years before George Washington’s birth, Washington’s father owned a fifty-four-year-old enslaved woman named Joice Heth.
What more do you need?
And Joice did look quite old.
Reports say she ‘resembled an Egyptian mummy,’ weighing just 46 pounds, and was blind and had no teeth.
Barnum would bring Joice onto the stage, where she’d sing a hymn in dialect and tell stories about ‘Little George.’
And audiences, eager to hear about the nation’s founding father, who had been gone just 36 years, flocked to see Joice perform.
When an anonymous letter to a newspaper editor claimed that Joice was a robot, not human, even more people flocked to the show, including repeat customers who wanted a second look.
And the hoax didn’t end when Joice died.
Barnum staged a public autopsy and charged people double to watch.
When the autopsy concluded with a finding that Joice was about eighty, not 161, Barnum claimed that the body examined was fake.
The real Joice was still alive and traveling the country!
And no one could disprove that.
Have Americans become more sophisticated since the P.T. Barnum days?
I’d like to think so.
But there is so much PROOF to the contrary!
I could go on and on….
You can convince people of almost anything.
I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
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