Full-length portrait of Miss Hardy standing beside two unnamed men, perhaps as a means of depicting her extraordinary height., In The American phrenological journal, vol. 21 (May, 1855), p. 120., Miss Hardy, known during her lifetime as the Maine Giantess, was exhibited in P.T. Barnum’s American Museum during the mid-nineteenth century as a nearly eight-foot tall curiosity., “Miss Hardy is now thirty years of age. She has grown about seven inches since she was twenty-one, and is nearly eight feet high at the present moment. She weighs three hundred and forty-six pounds, is massively proportioned, robust, matronly in appearance, symmetrical in figure, but inclined to stoop, (as most tall people are,) a habit acquired in her native village, where her gigantic height subjected her to a scrutiny on the part of strangers, most annoying to her bashful nature. Her features are large. The expression of her face, if not handsome, is amiable ; her disposition is mild and gentle to a pleasing degree. Her voice is somewhat coarse, but not unmusical. Her movements are easy and graceful ; although, having never before left her village home, she is as yet unsophisticated in fashionable ways, and moves and acts with a timidity that a little more acquaintance with public life will readily remove… She certainly is one of the most wonderful natural phenomena of the age.”--P. 120.
