Landon Middlecoff

The Kentucky Giant Boy

My father was a native of Virginia, born of German parents.  My mother a native of Tennessee, of Irish parentage.

There were twelve children in the family, five girls and seven boys.  There has been two deaths in the family, one sister and a brother.  I have one brother and three sisters older than myself, and five brothers and two sisters younger, which places me fifth in the family.

There is nothing unusual in their height, the tallest sister measuring five feet six inches in height.  The tallest brother stands six feet two inches in his stocking feet.  I was born at Cleveland, Tennessee.  Soon after my birth my parents moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where they resided for a number of years.

Hence I am known as the Kentucky Giant.  I am nineteen years of age, stand seven feet six inches in height, and at the present time weigh two hundred and eight pounds.
 

Landon was with W.W. Cole's circus for several seasons in the early 1880's. Early in his career he toured with another giant, six-and-a-half-foot Charles Kingsley, as the Middlecoff brothers. In 1885 Landon became sick with tubercular and died of the consumptive illness. Michael Mitchell in "Monsters of the Gilded Age" tell us his wife, Helen Mar, was also a circus performer and that Landon was buried at his home in Midland City, Michigan.