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| (above) This undated news clipping, in the author's collection, shows Grace "at her best" - her face very much resembling that of a mule. As her condition worsened the upper lip became so grossly enlarged that she found it difficult to speak clearly and she no longer resembled her show moniker. As years went by her nose and the area around the eyes became so swollen that only those closest to her were able to "read her face" to know how she was feeling, further isolating her from others. She reminds me much of Joe Merrick, the Elephant Man, in this regard. |
| www.quasi-modo.net |
| GRACIE MAY McCANNON |
| "GRACE McDANIEL, the Mule-Face Woman" |
| On the 120th anniversary of her birth and the 50th anniversary of her death this author is happy to announce that major inroads are finally being made into uncovering the personal life of the lady behind the mask, excuse the expression, of the “Mule Faced Woman.”
Grace was born in 1888 not far from the Iowa/Missouri border on a farm near the small community of Numa, Iowa. Daniel Sylvester and Martha McCannon had ten children in all: Jeanette, George Thomas, Robert Albert, Cora Bell, Ida N., Charles Eugene, Daniel Elmer, Henry LeRoy, Harvey Sylvester and finally, the baby of the family, Gracie May. By age 21 in 1910 all Gracie's brothers and sisters had either passed away or married leaving just Grace with her parents living in Appanoose Co., Iowa. Her parents by this time were elderly, Dad was then 71 and Mom just three years younger. Tragically, Grace's mother Martha passed away in 1912. Shortly thereafter Mr. McCannon and Grace caught a train to Houston and settled in the little farming community of Katy on the outskirts of town. Katy was named after the rail line they took, the M-K-T (Missouri, Kansas, Texas). Grace's father remarried to a lady named Hannah White who was twenty years his junior and in 1916 moved to nearby Houston. But Grace remained in Katy because it was there that she met and married a farmer gentleman eleven years her senior - Harry McDaniel. Harry had hoped to one day own his own farm but in the meantime he and a number of other men worked the large farm of a Katy landowner. In the Summer of 1917, Grace became pregnant with the couple’s first child. The following Spring she gave birth to a baby boy and named him Daniel Elmer, after her brother. The couple had everything to look forward to till tragedy struck. Less than five years into their marriage, Harry died. It is believed that Grace then went to live with her father but not wanting to be a burden on the old man and her step-mother Grace knew what she had to do to earn a living. For sometime now, Grace had a cancer of the lips that caused them to swell, year after year, ever larger. The cancer was especially virile in her upper lip. Showmen got word ,as they always do, of the remarkable-looking young woman and Grace consented to exhibit her condition for profit. Fellow Texan Johnny Bejano engaged her to work his sideshow which was then allied with the Morris & Castle Shows, a huge 40-car railroad show when it took over C.A. Wortham's World's Greatest Shows in 1923. In 1924, Grace’s beloved father passed away leaving her quite alone in this world. Though she came from a large family it appears they had all long ago abandoned and forgotten their little sister. When her eldest brother George died in 1949 no mention was made of Grace as a survivor. Gracie continued to exhibit with various shows including those owned by Dick Best and Pete Kortes at least till 1951. Grace semi-retired sometime in the 1950's, to Tampa, Florida a well-known haven and final rest stop for traveling show people. In 1958, with the cancer spreading freely throughout her now grotesquely misshapen face Grace decided to take a trip to Chicago. She had read of the pioneering work the Cook County Hospital had been doing in cancer treatment with it’s new cobalt-beam therapy unit. Maybe, just maybe, they could do something for her. She had known her diagnosis a long time now but postponed treatment till Elmer was an adult and then … to save money and then…. well she always intended to get treated but somehow kept putting it off. Gracie was admitted to the hospital with hope in her swollen eyes, but when the physicians took their first look at her, all hope vanished. It was too late and the cancer too far progressed for anything to be done. Just two days after checking in, Grace McDaniel was dead. An autopsy was performed confirming the diagnosis - carcinoma of the lip. In July of that year a Texas newspaper that covered Katy news noted that she had died in Chicago but that her body was brought back home and buried in Tampa. She was 70 years old and so far as anyone knows was survived only by her son Elmer. |