Once, giants walked among us. At least they did in the Medina County farming village of Seville. In the Mound Hill Cemetery in Seville, there is a tall stone statue of a woman. Some say it is supposed to be a likeness of Anna Swan Bates. It stands over the graves of Anna and her husband, Martin Bates, once known worldwide as the "World's Tallest Married Couple."
     Bates, who stood just a hair under eight feet tall, had been a Confederate soldier in the Civil War. His wife, Anna Swan Bates, who was about an inch or two taller than her husband, was born in Nova Scotia and had been discovered by P. T. Barnum. The two met when Bates went to work for Barnum after the Civil War, and they eventually married. They toured the world, appearing before the crowned heads of Europe.
     A couple of circus friends happened to own farms in Seville, and during the off-season the Bates' visited their friends and enjoyed the small town and its rural countryside so much they also decided to buy a farm and make Seville their home. It was while living in Seville that Anna Bates became pregnant and after a difficult delivery on January 18, 1879, gave birth to a giant baby boy--30 inches long and 23 1/2 pounds at birth. Each of his feet was six inches long. Sadly he only lived 11 hours. He, too, is buried in the Mound Hill Cemetery.
    Captain Bates had his farm home custom built. The ceilings were 14 feet high, all the doors were 8 1/2 feet tall, even the cellar was more than 9 feet deep. The specially built furniture was so massive that when average-sized guests visited, the women would usually stand rather than suffer the indignity of having to be hoisted up onto the seat. In those pre-automobile days, the Bates' had a specially built carriage that was pulled by two giant Clydesdale workhorses. After being forced to stand during a service at the local Baptist Church because they were too tall to fit in the regular-sized church pews, Bates had a special large pew made just for his family, so they could sit during the service.
    On August 5 of 1888, Anna Swan Bates died of kidney failure. She was just 42 years old. Captain Bates telegraphed a casket company in Cleveland to send a casket to hold the remains of a person eight feet tall. The casket company, thinking the size was a misprint, sent a normal-sized casket. Bates went into a fury over the mistake and they had to delay the funeral three days until the special casket could be constructed and shipped to Seville. Following his wife's funeral, Bates, taking no chances on a repeat of the casket fiasco, ordered a second extra-long casket for himself and stored it in his barn for years until it was finally needed.
    Bates was lonely after the death of Anna and a few years later married Annette Weatherby, the five-foot-tall daughter of his pastor. He also gave up the giant house on the farm and moved into a normal-sized home in downtown Seville. (He did enlarge the bedroom to hold his 10-foot-long bed, and he brought with him some of his favorite chairs.) From all accounts the tall captain had a short temper, and old age did not improve his disposition. He took to chewing tobacco in his later years and was known to spit at people he did not like. His investments and the income from his farm allowed him to live out his life comfortably in the little northern Ohio town. He died at the age of 74 in January of 1919.A few of the old-timers in Seville still remember Captain Bates. Many of the places associated with his life still stand. The Seville Historical Society (70 W. Main St., Seville, OH 330-769-4056) has some of his clothing and life-size pictures of him and his first wife, Anna Swan Bates, that visitors can pose with. The farm home is gone, but the barn still remains. In the Mound Hill Cemetery, the statue to Anna Bates now stands eternal guard over the graves of Martin, Anna, and their baby.

With written permission from Gray & Company, Publishers http://grayco.com
Article excerpted from the book entitled "Ohio Oddities" by Neil Zurcher: A Guide to the Curious Attractions of the "Buckeye State" http://www.graco.com/cleveland/oddities