Boots Farm Skeleton

The Boots Farm Skeleton was an alleged giant skeleton that was claimed to have been excavated from a gravel pit at the farm of Franklin Boots near Center Township, Indiana in 1883, described in a newspaper report of the Ottawa Free Trader (Ottawa, Illinois) as having been estimated to have been some 9 feet (2.74 m.) in height on the basis of skull dimensions. The initial reporting was later discredited by a local physician, Marcellus Martin Adams, who reported that the finding was of only "a few fragments" and that the "cranium was not larger than the average of the modern Indian," suggesting a height closer to 5 ft. 8 in. (1.73 m.).

Dramatis Personae

 * George Arnold, farmhand who excavated the remains;
 * Franklin Boots, owner of the gravel pit in which the remains were found;
 * R. J. Strickland, editor of the Greenfield Jeffersonian, later possessor of the remains;
 * Marcellus Martin Adams, the debunking doctor;
 * John Collett, the Indiana state geologist;