(1846-1888)
By the age of four, she was already 4' 6" and by six, was as tall as her mother. At sixteen, now seven feet high, she had become a toruist attraction, and people would follow her through the streets, firing questions and reporting the 'Giantess Sightings' to freinds and family.
Billed as the only female giant, she eventually reached the height of 7' 9" and weighed in at 509 pounds. In his autobiography, Barnum himself says of Anna: "She was an intelligent and by no means ill-looking girl, and during the long period she was in my employe she was visited by thousands of persons."
She began by doing two shows a day at his American Museum in New York, where crowds flocked daily to see the curiosities, but on July 13, 1865; fire broke out in the museum and spread so quickly that Anna barely escaped with her life. Rescuers found her at the top of the stairway "in a swooning condition from the smoke." Because of her great size, it took eighteen men using a block and tackle to remove her from the burning building. For Barnum, he couldn't buy publicity like that.
The blaze reportedly cost her everything she owned except the clothes on her back. Her trunk, which the fire destroyed, contained $1,200 in gold plus a sizable amount of "greenbacks."
The couple (at left) were married on June 17, 1871, at London's historic St-Martin-in-the-Fields church, after first being presented to Queen Victoria. They toured for awhile with Barnum, before retiring to a farm they had purchased near Seville, Ohio. The house and furniture was all specially made, and it is said that visitors had to climb up the rungs of a chair in order to sit down.
Anna and Martin had two children; a daughter weighing 18 pounds and a son, 22 1/2; but neither children made it past infancy.
Anna herself died in 1888 of tuberculosis, a day shy of her 42nd birthday. The obituary in the Seville Times described Anna Swan as a learned woman, who "at an early age developed an inquiring mind
