Joice Heth,
George Washington’s Childhood Nurse

There is no information known about Joice Heth before she became an attraction, besides that she was a slave. It is believed that she was born in the 1750s, her birth place unknown. In 1835, she was the property of John S. Bowling in Kentucky, who would say she was the childhood nurse of George Washington. In order for that to be possible, she had to be over 115 years old. Bowling would be the one to establish Heth’s persona. It is with Bowling that she would begin her routine of singing hymns she supposedly sang to Washington and answered questions about him for audiences. 

Later that year, she was purchased by R.W. Lindsay and put on display at the Masonic Hall in Philadelphia. P.T. Barnum was shown an advertisement by an acquaintance that ran in The Pennsylvania Inquirer on July 15, 1835. It described Heth’s story and the alleged proof that she was 161 years old. The acquaintance explained to Barnum that Lindsay had little interest in the showman lifestyle and wanted to return home to Kentucky.

Barnum was inspired to seek Heth out. Up until this point, the 25-year-old Barnum had worked a variety of jobs, but was not yet the showman he is known as today. The purchase and exhibition of Joice Heth would be his big break.

Barnum went to Philadelphia and described the experience of witnessing her on display for the first time in his autobiography:

I was favourably struck with the appearance of the old woman. So far as outward indications were concerned, she might almost as well have been called a thousand years old as any other age. She was lying upon a high lounge in the middle of the room; her lower extremities were drawn up, with her knees elevated some two feet above the top of the lounge. She was apparently in good heath and spirits, but former diseases or old age, or perhaps both combined, had rendered her unable to change her position; in fact, although she could move on of her arms at will, her lower limbs were fixed in their position, and could not be straightened. She was totally blind, and her eyes were so deeply sunken in their sockets that the eyeballs seemed to have disappeared altogether. She had no teeth, but possessed a head of thick bushy gray hair. Her left arm layed across her breast, and she had no power to remove it. The fingers of her left hand were drawn down to as nearly to close it, and remained fixed and immovable. The nails upon that hand were about four inches in length, and extended above her wrist. The nails upon her large toes had also grown ot the thickness of nearly a quarter of an inch. 

She was very sociable, and would talk almost incessantly so long as visitors would converse with her. She sang a variety of ancient hymns, and was very garrulous when speaking of her protege “dear little George”, as she termed the great father of our country. She declared that she was present at his birth, that she was formerly a slave of Augustine Washington, the father of George, and that she was the first person who put clothes upon him. “In fact,” said Joice, and it was a favorite expression of hers, “I raised him.” She related many interesting anecdotes of “her dear little George,” and this, mixed with her conversations upon religious subjects, for she claimed to be a member of the Baptist Church, rendered her exhibition an interesting one.

The Autobiography of P.T. Barnum, p. 55-56

Barnum was told a story about how she ended up under the ownership of Augustine Washington, where she had been up until her recent “discovery” and viewed the supposed original bill of sale. That information mixed with the stories she was telling was enough to validate her credibility. 

Barnum saw no issue with displaying a clearly physically compromised person and bought her for $1,000, equivalent to over $33,000 today. Barnum, with the help of lawyer Levi Lyman, created marketing materials detailing Heth’s backstory which they would sell at her exhibition. Lyman would assist Barnum again when promoting the feegee mermaid hoax. 

Barnum and Lyman took her on tour across the North East and displayed her for predominantly white audiences. This included a stop at Niblo's Gardens in New York City before heading up to Boston. Barnum had large crowds for weeks in Boston. He knew how to play the press, so he’d made sure there was a steady stream of advertisements and articles in newspapers. This guaranteed that Heth was not forgotten by the public.

When crowds dwindled, Barnum drummed up new publicity by having an anonymous letter to a newspaper claiming that this anonymous person had discovered that Heth was really an automaton and this display was an elaborate ventriloquist act. Large crowds returned to see for themselves whether or not Heth was a automaton. Barnum would use this anonymous letter tactic a few years later when promoting the feegee mermaid. 

Heth was only with Barnum from August 1835 to January 1836 before she passed away on February 19, 1836. By that time, Barnum allegedly made anywhere from $50,000-$100,000 from Heth, equivalent to over $1,600,000 today.  She became Barnum’s first huge attraction. Everyone wanted to experience a piece of history. Heth’s story was the real-world embodiment of the “Magic Negro” trope that is often seen in literature or film. She was the wise, older, Black woman who had a level of influence to aid the white boy who would become the first president of the United States. 

Barnum didn’t let Heth’s death stop him from attracting attention, he had one more trick up his sleeve. At one of the tour stops of Heth, a surgeon expressed interest to Barnum in performing an autopsy on her. At the time, she was alive, so that was not possible. But upon her death, Barnum remembered the surgeon's offer and invited him to fulfill his wish. Barnum invited a number of people to pay a fee and witness the autopsy. Approximately 1,500 attendees witnessed the autopsy with their backgrounds ranging from doctors to the press. Upon examining the body, the surgeon noted that Heth was most likely not older than 80. Barnum denied knowing that she was was only half the age she was being presented as, and that he was fooled like everyone else, despite there being speculation about the authenticity of her backstory. Over time, the backstory was unraveled. 

The day after the autopsy, the New York Sun ran an article explaining that the Joice Heth story was all a sham and detailing the entire examination. The reporter, Richard Adams Locke,  known for "Great Moon Hoax of 1835", included how he knew the story of Heth could not have been plausible. 

It didn’t stop there. Lyman thought he would take the hoax one step further and contacted James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald. He claimed that the autopsy was a hoax. The body examined was that of an old Black woman from Harlem, and that Joice Heth was on exhibition in Connecticut. So on February 27, 1936, the Herald ran an article claiming that the Sun’s article was obviously a fabrication because Heth is alive and well. Locke at the Sun claimed his was right, and Bennett at the Herald knew he was fooled, but doubled-down, claiming to have proof that he was right. 

Later that year, Lyman ran into Bennett. Bennett was furious. Lyman offered to give him the full, truthful story of Joice Heth as a consolation prize. Lyman then spun another tale for Bennett, which was serialized in the Herald. In Barnum’s 1855 autobiography, he leads on that Lyman’s tale was the perceived truth, implying that that account may too be false, or at the very least embellished.

It is unlikely we will ever learn more about Heth’s life before she became an attraction, but her story continues to resonate with people. The 1980s Broadway musical Barnum includes Barnum’s involvement in Heth’s life. The show is still being put on by high school theater groups today. In 2004, there was a one-act play titled The Exploitation of Joice Heth that was performed at the Metropolitan Playhouse in New York. In 2017, the Barnum biographical musical The Greatest Showman was released. The film depicted a revisionist history of Barnum’s life, leaving out the story of Heth and other minorities he exploited. As a result, Heth’s story gained a resurgence among a new generation with many articles being written highlighting her experience. 

Written by Eliza Rinn