Ella Ewing

Ella Katherine "Kate" Ewing (March 9, 1872 – January 10, 1913) was a Missouri woman considered the world's tallest female of her era. She would use her great height to earn a living as a sideshow attraction, popularly known as "The Missouri Giantess."

Early life Ella Ewing was born in La Grange, Missouri, the only child of Benjamin F. and Anna Eliza (Herring) Ewing.

Published estimates of Ewing's adult height vary. According to the journal kept by her mother, Anna Ewing, she stopped growing at the age of 22 after reaching . Historian Barbara Chasteen repeated this figure in her 1977 biography of Ewing. Guinness World Records has listed her at 7 feet 4.5 inches (2.25 m) and stated that she may have reached 8 feet inch (2.46 m). Because her height was never conclusively documented, Ewing is not recognized by Guinness World Records as the tallest woman in history.

Although Ewing was never formally diagnosed during her lifetime, modern writers generally attribute her extraordinary growth to pituitary gigantism.

In 1892, at the age of 20, Ewing began her professional career when Chicago showman and museum owner Lewis Epstein offered her $1,000 for a 27-day engagement at his museum. The agreement allowed her parents, Benjamin and Anna Ewing, to accompany her, and the family treated the trip as both work and a vacation, visiting Chicago when she was not on display. After returning to Gorin, Missouri, Epstein offered her a second contract worth $5,000 for a five-month engagement, a sum her father believed would have taken him several years to earn through farming.

The income from her exhibitions allowed Ewing to support her parents financially, purchase a 120-acre (49 ha) farm near Gorin, and build a custom-designed home with extra-high ceilings, doors, and windows to accommodate her stature. Her travels also exposed her to places she otherwise would not have seen and broadened her education.

Death "The Missouri Giantess", Ella Ewing with her parents Benjamin and Anna Ewing.By the early 1910s, Ewing's health had declined. She died at her home near Gorin, Missouri, on January 10, 1913, at the age of 40 from tuberculosis and pneumonia.

Ewing requested that she be cremated because she feared her body would become the object of scientific examination or public curiosity after her death. Her father, Benjamin Ewing, instead chose a traditional burial.

Legacy In Scotland County, Missouri there is an "Ella Ewing Reservoir" for fishing and an arts festival in Memphis, Missouri was also named for her.