| LC control no. | nr 94023422 |
|---|---|
| Descriptive conventions | rda |
| Personal name heading | Heth, Joice, -1836 |
| Variant(s) | Heth, Joice, d. 1836 |
| Associated country | United States |
| Birth date | 1756~ |
| Death date | 1836-02-19 |
| Place of death | New York (N.Y.) |
| Profession or occupation | Circus performers |
| Found in | Great attraction just arrived at Worcester, 1835: t.p. (Joice Heth) Saxon, A.H. P.T. Barnum. The legend and the man, 1989: p. 68, etc. (Joice Heth; toured as an attraction of P.T. Barnum; alleged to be 161 year old nurse of Gen. George Washington; d. 2/19/1836 at Bethel, Conn. at the home of P.T. Barnum's half brother) Life of Joice Heth, 2000: p. 3 (b. Madagascar, Africa, 1674) African American National Biography, accessed January 30, 2015, via Oxford African American Studies Center database: (Heth, Joice; slave; born c.1756. An aged and crippled slave woman, she was exhibited for profit by slaveholders with a false claim that she was 161 years old; the bill of sale to P. T. Barnum was executed on 6 August 1835; he made her one of the most publicly subjugated females of the nineteenth century; he excited interest in the nation's oldest black woman who supposedly played a role in the life of George Washington; her frame was bent with paralysis, her arms and fingers were deformed, she was blind, she suffered from a severely damaged eye socket, and she possessed no teeth; even in death Barnum robbed her of dignity; in a profit-driven scheme supposedly to verify her age, hundreds of spectators paid fifty cents to Barnum to witness the dissection of her body by Dr. David L. Rogers in a New York City saloon. She died 19 February 1836 in New York, New York, United States) |
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