MUMMIES!

Reading the paper today, I noticed the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh will be the first museum in the United States and only museum in the eastern part of the country to exhibit The Mysterious Bog People. It will be at the museum July 9, 2005 through January 23, 2006. My wife had an early desire to be an archeologist, but her path in life led her into the teaching of English, Communications, and Drama. I am certain that we will be traveling to Pittsburg to see this exhibit.
One day several years ago, the good wife wanted to go to Phillipi to see the mummies of Barbour County. Housed in the Barbour County Historical Museum (which is in the renovated train station), the mummies reside in a separate room that was obviously a restroom.
Newspaper articles taped to the tile walls tell the story of these two unclaimed bodies from the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane, which were given to a local man who wanted to demonstrate an embalming recipe he discovered in the Bible. The recipe consisted of water, saltpeter, and absorbable fumes that arise from the combustion of sublimed sulfur. In the late 1800s, the mummies toured Europe with P.T. Barnum.
Mummy owner "Bigfoot" Byer donated the mummies to the museum and now a quarter of the $3-4,000 dollars collected each year goes to a football scholarship. Bigfoot's brother was a football coach. Avanelle W. Myers, who started the museum, refused to let the mummies in, but they were on display a week after she died.
Yes, we had one of those wonderful mini-vacation adventures that we enjoy so much. Here are a few shots of the mummies of Barbour County for your perusal!