Rosa_Lee_Plemons

ROSA LEE PLEMONS

"Rosa Lee Plemmons is what may be called a piece of bric-a-brac and closely resembles the bronze figure of a crossed legged Chinese deity. She is scarcely larger than a 3-year-old child."
- 1894

                                          KIDNAPED FREAK
                                                   An Old Soldier Recovers His Ossified Daughter.
                                          He is Trying to Reach Chattanooga, Where He Has Kinsfolk
                                           - The Story and Condition of the Child. Her Perfect Health

Memphis, Jan. 30 (1893) - There is a natural curiosity in town, a freak known as the "ossified girl." She is almost 19 years old and only weigh twenty-seven pounds. The Milan correspondent is not responsible for this. It is a fact and here is the story.
   At a hotel on Front street is an old Confederate soldier of the Nineteenth Louisiana, and with him is his little daughter, Rosa Lee, the "ossified girl." The father is returning from Wheeling, W. Va., with his child. She was stolen from him by museum managers, and after many months' search he found her where she was exhibited at Wheeling.
   Two years ago Thomas Plimons lived with his wife and four children, Rosa Lee and three others, in Paul's Valley, Cherokee Nation. The mother died. The father and his children drifted around and were in hard lines. A museum manager saw the child and offered the father a good salary to exhibit his daughter among the curiosities of the museum. He went to St. Louis and there exhibited the child until taken sick. The museum people were going on the road and promised the father to write to him and keep him posted as to the location of his child. He received two letters and then lost all trace of the child. Telegrams and postals were sent to every city in the United States. Finally the old fellow was telegraphed to come to Wheeling, which he did, and there found her and took her immediately into his arms and carried her away. The museum manager protested that they had paid the former company high for her, but all in vain, for the little one was wrapped in the father's overcoat, taken aboard the train and was soon leaving that city. They arrived here Thursday night almost without money and are trying to reach kinspeople at Chattanooga. The child has a pretty face, well formed, with large dark eyes bright as two stars and dark hair. Her skin is as fair as marble, and looks like wax, it is so smooth and white. Her arms and legs are like a skeleton, covered but sparsely with flesh and are stiff at the elbows and knees. She has never been sick a day and enjoys three good meals a day. She is truly a curiosity.

Macon (Georgia) Weekly Telegraph

the OSSIFIED GIRL

The truth about Rosa Lee Plemons, like most who were exhibited for profit in those days, is hard to pin down. Even her last name has been spelled variously as Plemmons or Plimons even Clemons or Clemens. She was born in Tulare Co., California in 1874 and was said to have weighed only one pound at birth. She developed very slowly, gradually growing to only four feet tall at age 18 and was advertised as then weighing only 28 pounds! (Which I suppose is possible)
   Rose was one of four children born to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Plemons. The Plemons family was living in Paul's Valley, Chickasaw Nation (now Oklahoma) when Mrs. Plemons passed away around 1890. By this time Rosa's ossification had progressed to the point where she could barely move her arms and legs.
   The tale told above of Rosa's kidnaping is plausible enough. Such things did happen. But when we read a year later that Rosa is abducted again, this time from a museum in Texas, one begins to wonder if it all wasn't just a story that Thomas planted with the media for free publicity.
   In 1892, Thomas reported that he had sold his farm and used the cash to find a cure for his daughter but to no avail. He ran out of money and applied for admission to a St. Louis, Missouri hospital for his daughter and himself (he said he too was sick) and was granted his wish. His daughter was on the brink of death. Why she couldn't even talk because of a malformed tongue and had to use a kind of sign language to communicate, he said.
   Yet two years later Rosa Lee, the ossified girl, is still alive having recently been abducted again. It is even reported that she can speak a little! It's certainly possible she was not ossified at all but suffered some sort of degenerative disease that caused her to lose flesh. But then, that's showbusiness.
   Nothing further is heard of Rosa or Mr. Plemons after late 1894.

from Anomalies & Curiosities of Medicine