Following the excitement of the first Texas Cotton Palace exposition in late 1894, Waco residents probably needed a hot new topic of conversation. Although something big did soon start local tongues wagging, residents had no idea it would involve a controversy rising from the depths of the muddy Brazos River. 

Early on Jan. 11, 1895 — about a month after the close of the Cotton Palace — Waco merchant George Renick and his wife were walking along the west shore of the Brazos in what is now Cameron Park. Besides owning a small store on North Sixth Street, Renick was a fur trapper. He’d brought his wife along that morning to help him check the steel traps he’d left by the river to catch mink.

As Mrs. Renick approached a trap near the foot of Tennessee Avenue, she excitedly called her husband to see what appeared to be a human leg sticking up from the sand. When her husband took his stick and struck the object, it made a metallic sound, causing Mrs. Renick to cry out in surprise.

Newspapers across the state were abuzz about the strange find of a petrified man in Waco.

The couple dug around the object to free it from the muck. With help from some others who had happened on the scene, the Renicks were able to remove what appeared to be the petrified remains of a large man. The Dallas Morning News described the object as “a symmetrical, perfect type of superb manhood” with “every feature as distinct as the living man appeared.” 

The large reddish object was apparently colored over time by the waters of the Brazos. It appeared to be the remains of a man who had been prepared for burial, with his arms and hands placed carefully in position. The feet were together with heels touching, and the body seemed to be so well preserved that even the pores of the skin were visible. What looked like hair was present on the head, chin and other body parts.

The petrified man was described as having “the face of a fighter, with well-defined brows, firm chin, deep-set eyes and heavy jaws.” The only flaw was a large gash across the abdominal cavity that had caused it to cave in a bit.

Closer inspection revealed what were thought to be bullet wounds in the preserved body — one in the forehead, two in the chest and one in each leg.

As word about the incredible discovery spread, Wacoans hurried down to the river to have a look. It didn’t take a businessman like George Renick long to realize that opportunity was knocking. He quickly secured space in an empty building downtown, had the petrified man hauled there from the river and started charging 25 cents admission to anyone who wanted a peek. By day’s end, thousands of people had viewed the body, many of those paying for the privilege.

Because of the unusual pattern of apparent wounds on the manlike monolith, a number of local residents who viewed it thought they knew exactly whose body had been underneath all that stone and mud. They believed it was an infamous McLennan County outlaw named Bill Johnson. According to these oldtimers, Johnson had threatened to come to Waco in the late 1850s to find and kill local resident Major Henry Lazenby, who had arrested a friend of Johnson’s. Warned of Johnson’s impending arrival, the McLennan County sheriff organized a posse to meet him. In a heated shootout on Waco’s downtown Bridge Street, one officer was killed and four more were injured. Johnson was wounded by bullets and eventually was captured and placed in the county jail.

That modest jail, described as “a fragile structure,” was no hindrance to the lynch mob that soon arrived. The mob was able to snatch Johnson from his cell with virtually no opposition from a crowd of onlookers, after which the doomed outlaw was hanged from a nearby tree. Dr. J.H. Sears performed an autopsy that required Johnson’s corpse to be disemboweled, and the remains were buried on a hill overlooking the Brazos River. This supposedly was close to where the petrified man had been discovered. The man who cut Johnson’s body down and a second man who buried him both identified the petrified man as the remains of the infamous criminal.

As if to close the case, these witnesses claimed that Johnson’s bullet wounds matched the location of the apparent bullet marks on the stone figure.

If the mystery of the petrified man seemed solved by the end of the first day, the following days brought new waves of speculation. These theories and accusations only served to muddy the waters.

The supposed identity quickly came under attack. Some doubted whether Johnson’s body could have moved from its grave atop the hill to the Brazos River below by natural forces. Others claimed to remember that Johnson’s body had been unearthed and carried away by gravediggers in 1887. It was said that a Waco resident now owned a skeleton purchased from gravediggers which had bullet marks corresponding to those on Johnson’s body.

A local spiritualist soon got into the act, claiming to have talked to the ghost still inhabiting the petrified man. During this conversation, the spiritualist supposedly learned that the body was not Bill Johnson, but rather a Texas Ranger. The lawman supposedly had fallen into the river after being shot by Indians, and his body had drifted into a bank of sand and gravel before being gradually turned to stone.

No matter what people believed before they paid their two bits to view the petrified figure, seeing it up close was by all accounts compelling. A Dallas Morning News reporter wrote, “The incredulous people who regard everything as a ‘fake’ until they see and touch it doubt no longer after they enter the presence of that dignified effigy of a man embalmed by natural processes, who looks so lifelike that one feels as if he was about to speak as they gaze into his eyes. People go in smiling and come out looking grave enough.”

Others couldn’t decide what to make of the stone figure. John Peterson of Philadelphia, who viewed the petrified man while visiting Waco, said, “I change my mind twice an hour about Renick’s wonder. When I hear the proofs I think he is a fraud. When I see the man I think, for the time being, he is a genuine petrified man, one who was hung by a mob, too.”

Over the next few weeks, a parade of geologists, physicians and other men of science examined the petrified man to draw their own conclusions. A few supported the original theory, saying it was not possible to make a counterfeit that looked so real. 

Other experts, however, believed some schemer simply had made a Texas version of the Cardiff Giant, a 10-foot-tall “petrified man” that had been unearthed in 1869 in Cardiff, N.Y. The find was a sensation that many people traveled long distances and paid good money to see. However, it was found to be a well-planned hoax concocted by New York tobacconist George Hull. 

Hull had hired a stonecutter to form the giant man out of a large block of gypsum. He then stained the carved figure and beat it with steel knitting needles to make it look older. He secretly buried the stone statue in a field, let some time pass and then hired two unsuspecting men to dig a well at a specified spot and “discover” the giant. The story made worldwide headlines and prompted legendary showman P.T. Barnum to create and display his own “Cardiff Giant.”

As time passed, many concluded that Waco’s petrified man was a similar hoax. They theorized that someone possibly had used plaster to make a mold of a corpse, then poured cement into the mold to form the stone man. The apparent bullet holes on the petrified man, they reasoned, were places where the cement had not mixed well and left bubbles on the surface.

There was agreement on the best way to determine whether the petrified man was authentic: cut into his stone exterior and see if there were bones and teeth underneath. Judge G.B. Gerald offered to pay $100 if such an examination failed to prove fraud. But Renick, who claimed to have no idea how the petrified man came to be in the Brazos, refused every request to slice open his profitable attraction in the pursuit of truth.

“The thing that makes me tired most is the number of people who want to chop into the man,” Renick said. “If I were to let them have their way, in an hour they would saw him into bits, punch the pieces full of gimlet holes, grind him up to powder, and in the end do nothing but contradict each other about where he came from and what he is made of.”

If the petrified man was a fake, who had placed him in the Brazos? No one seemed to accuse Renick and his wife of deliberately creating a hoax. One theory was that unknown outsiders had created the giant, brought him to Waco and placed him in the river, planning to come back sometime and retrieve him. According to this theory, the river had inadvertently exposed the stone figure, allowing the Renicks to discover it by accident.

This was temporarily bolstered by reports that weeks before the petrified man’s discovery, a mysterious coffin-shaped box with unknown contents and weighing hundreds of pounds had been shipped to town. The Waco and Northwestern Railroad and delivered to a vacant house on South 10th Street. It was soon determined, however, that the box had contained a shipment of household goods and not a stone man.

While the debate raged over the petrified man’s origins, other disagreements were being played out in Waco courtrooms. Almost immediately after the discovery, the owner of the land where the object was found sued Renick, claiming it belonged to him. A series of conflicting legal decisions at one point caused the petrified man to be seized by sheriff’s officers and almost sold at public auction. But Renick was able to pay the money required to reclaim him.

Newspaper reports of the discovery roused interest across Texas and beyond. One article said that the stone man had “long, curling hair.” This prompted a female reader in New Orleans to write Renick, saying she was looking for a missing man who fit that description.

What eventually happened to George Renick’s profitable discovery? I must admit I don’t know how much money he ended up making from exhibiting the petrified man, or even how long the controversial attraction lingered in Waco. Newspaper records are incomplete. The only newspaper I have found on microfilm with articles about the event is the Dallas Morning News. That paper’s coverage ends abruptly with a brief report on Jan. 22, when the petrified man was still in Waco. 

However, I found a short item in the Waco Times-Herald, written almost five years after the petrified man’s discovery:

“The petrified man, who was found three (sic) years ago on the banks of the Brazos, may or may not be petrified, but his finders are a long ways from being petrified. They are mighty live corpses and are hustling him all over the United States, and still showing him to gaping crowds at two bits a head.”

SOURCES: Dallas Morning News, Jan. 12-22, 1895; Waco Times-Herald, Sept. 10, 1899.

When he isn’t researching Waco history or trying to learn to play the ukulele, former broadcast journalist Randy Fiedler works as a communications specialist with Baylor marketing and communications. He can be reached at fied103@yahoo.com.