when the entire collection was purchased by private collector, William Jamieson of Toronto, whose hope was to revive the tradition Thomas Barnett started. People associated with the museum Thomas Barnett was the original founder of the Niagara Falls Museum. He housed his collection of taxidermy and curiosities in a former brewery in Niagara Falls, Ontario before erecting a building at the base of the Canadian Horseshoe Falls. Sydney Barnett was the founder's son who purchased and brought back from Egypt some of the mummies the museum is now famous for returning to Dr. Zahi Hawass of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. An avid taxidermist like his father, he organized some of the museum's public events including the Wild West themed attractions. Dr. J. Douglas of Montreal accompanied Sydney Barnett to Egypt. Saul Davis purchased the museum in 1878 and introduced an art gallery. The museum was then moved to the American side of the Niagara Falls. It did however move back to the Canadian side when the US parks authority assumed possession of the land on which the museum stood. In Canada, Sherman family sold the museum's collection in 1999 to a Canadian collector, William Jamieson (died July 3, 2011) a dealer of tribal art with an impressive collection of shrunken heads, among other curiosities. The Niagara Falls History Museum acquired part of the Niagara Falls Museum collection in 2014 which included Barnett's beloved two-legged dog Skipper. Identification of Ramesses I In 1999, Jamieson sold the Egyptian artifacts in the museum's collection, including some mummies, to the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. These included an unidentified male mummy. Through research and collaboration with medical experts at Emory University School of Medicine, museum scholars were able to identify the mummy as Pharaoh Ramesses I. The museum returned the mummy to Egypt in 2003 as a gift of goodwill and international cultural cooperation whereupon it was placed in its own museum after having been missing for over 150 years, 140 years of which it had been in Niagara Falls, Canada, unknown to anyone. See also Niagara Falls History Museum References 1827 establishments in Canada Museums disestablished in 1999 Defunct museums in Canada Museums in Niagara Falls, Ontario Natural history museums in Canada Museums established in 1827