BDN reports Hudson Museum seeking to return bones to tribes
The Bangor Daily News reported the Hudson Museum at the University of Maine is home to human remains unearthed by Dr. Clarence Edmonds Hemingway — father of writer Ernest Hemingway. In 1928, the elder Hemingway traveled to Florida and excavated burial sites of extinct native tribes, according to the article. The relics eventually became part of the Portland Society of Natural History collection, and when the society closed in 1970, Hemingway’s bone collection and other items were transferred to the Hudson Museum. The museum is now working with the federal government and two Florida tribes to return the human remains to their descendants, the article states. Gretchen Faulkner, director of the museum, said the bones were never on display. Dan Sandweiss, the museum’s chief cooperating curator, spoke about what little is known about the remains, as well as how and why Hemingway went to Weedon Island to dig up the bones. Museum officials found the Weedon Island collection in 2002 and had forensic anthropologist and UMaine researcher Marcella Sorg examine the bones. She concluded that they were of Native American ancestry, the article states.