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Full-length studio portrait of Captain Martin Van Buren Bates and Anna Haining Swan Bates standing together as a couple, photographed around the time of their 1871 wedding in London.
Captain Martin Van Buren Bates and Anna Haining Swan Bates, photographed around the time of their 1871 wedding in London. Three years later they settled on a farm at the edge of Seville, Ohio. Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Local History · From Seville Village

The coffin that came home wrong

When Anna Swan Bates died in her Seville home on August 5, 1888, the Cleveland undertakers assumed the wired dimensions were a mistake. Her funeral was delayed a full week.

Published 2026-08-05 · 3 min read

Anna Haining Swan was born in Mill Brook, Colchester County, Nova Scotia, on August 6, 1846. She stood seven feet, eleven inches. She weighed 413 pounds. She toured with P. T. Barnum's traveling show in New York.1

On June 17, 1871, she married Captain Martin Van Buren Bates at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. Bates was a Confederate cavalry officer from Kentucky. He was also a giant. Queen Victoria attended the wedding.2

Three years later, the Bateses moved to Seville, Ohio, and bought a farm on the edge of the village. Martin built a house on the property to their scale. Fourteen-foot ceilings. Doors approximately eight feet tall. Custom furniture, all built to order. He wrote of the house in his own words: "I built a house upon it designed especially for our comfort. The furniture was all built to order."3

In 1877 Anna joined the Seville Baptist Church. The 1888 Ohio historical marker at Stanhope Park says plainly that she "entertained and taught Sunday school." Local tradition holds that the congregation built an extra-wide pew for the couple. That specific claim has not been verified in a Baptist church record.4

On January 18, 1879, Anna gave birth in the Seville house to a son. He weighed 23 and three-quarter pounds. He was between 28 and 30 inches long. Guinness recognizes him today as the heaviest newborn ever recorded. He lived for eleven hours.5

Anna died in her sleep on August 5, 1888, one day before her forty-second birthday. Martin wired Cleveland for a coffin. The undertakers received the dimensions, assumed a clerical error, and shipped a standard casket. When it arrived, obviously wrong, Martin re-ordered. The correct coffin took three more days to arrive from Cleveland. Anna's body waited in the Seville house Martin had built to her scale. She was finally buried on Monday, August 13, 1888, at Mound Hill Cemetery on Seville Road, one day after what would have been her forty-second birthday.6

Martin commissioned a life-sized white marble statue of Anna from Europe. It stands on a granite pedestal at the family plot at Mound Hill today, one of the tallest cemetery monuments in Medina County. Martin lived until January 7, 1919, and is buried next to her.7

The house he built for her was torn down in 1948. The Ohio historical marker at Stanhope Park is the second-best place to stand and think about them. The best is Mound Hill Cemetery.

Footnotes

  1. Anna's birth, height, weight, and Barnum era. Nova Scotia birth date confirmed by the Dictionary of Canadian Biography and Historic Nova Scotia. Height and weight are the widely-published figures from her Barnum-era touring records and her adult medical documentation.
  2. 1871 London wedding. The date of June 17, 1871 and the location at St Martin-in-the-Fields are documented in the Anna Haining Bates Wikipedia entry (cited to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography) and in the Ohio Historical Marker 1-52 text at Stanhope Park, Seville. Queen Victoria's attendance is in the same sources.
  3. The Seville house dimensions. The 14-foot ceilings and 8-foot doors are recorded across the Wikipedia entry on Martin Van Buren Bates, the Appalachian Historian profile, and Ohio Traveler. Martin's own quoted description is from Wikipedia's Bates entry, sourced back to a period biographical account.
  4. Church membership and the oversized pew. Anna joining the Seville Baptist Church in 1877 and teaching Sunday school is reproduced verbatim from Ohio Historical Marker 1-52. The extra-wide pew claim appears repeatedly online but has not been traced to a period Baptist church record; it is presented here as local tradition, not documented fact.
  5. The 1879 birth. Date of January 18, 1879 given by both Wikipedia and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (some sources give January 15). Weight of 23¾ pounds and length of 28–30 inches confirmed by the Ohio Historical Marker and Guinness records.
  6. The coffin delay and August 13 funeral. The story of the standard-size coffin arriving first, the re-order, and the week-long delay is well-attested across secondary sources (Wikipedia, Appalachian Historian, and Primidi). No period newspaper account was located in this research. The Seville Historical Society or the Medina County District Library may hold a Medina County Gazette or Cleveland Plain Dealer obituary that would serve as a primary source.
  7. The marble statue at Mound Hill and Martin's burial. The statue is documented in the Wikipedia entry on Martin Van Buren Bates, in the Appalachian Historian piece, and in Historic Nova Scotia. Mound Hill Cemetery at 4529 Seville Road is Medina County's oldest continuously-operating cemetery, established 1824, per Guilford Township's official page. Martin's death date of January 7, 1919 is confirmed across biographical sources.

Sources

Anna's dates, marriage, house, church membership, son, and burial are documented in the Ohio Historical Marker at Stanhope Park and in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Mound Hill Cemetery, the marble statue at the family plot, and the historical marker at Stanhope Park are all in Seville today.

Medina Homes Guide · Verified 2026-08-05