I was just on the verge of thinking the human race mightn't be so bad after all when you showed me the error of my thinking...unbelievable!! The depths "people" wil go to make a buck. Is the sale of human remains even legal in this country? I wonder what's next, maybe opening up the Arizona on live pay per view to get some more "relics" to sell?

Keep taking your blue mass!!
Asst. Surg. SD Scroggins

Looks like they pulled it - it's not there anymore!

I hope they came to their senses and didn't just do it because of bad public relations for show that.

I think you could send an email or call the auctioneer, just dropping it from the website will not work as a cover up - we KNOW those items were listed there.

what are the details on what kind of human remains? Ill play devils advocate here..where does the line appear between morbid disrepectful collection, and amature archologly? as I watch quite a few shows on archeologly I see drawers full of human bones at colledges and universities and museuems. how is it they get to keep the bones on file and john q gets a bad rap...Now if we aquired it through grvae robbing...bad but if time team comes and films the whole thing its good....
Dont throw stones at me....Im just a messenger, but I thought it might be thought provoking.....
one more word.....Indian atrifacts...ok two more words.

Seamus

"it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifing......nothing"
MacBeth

I can't tell if this article is about the same auction or not. Any thoughts?

http://www.middletownjournal.com/featr/content/shared/living/stories/CIV...

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Michael Johnson

I noticed the different auction houses as well but the mention of a Polk sword in both confused me.

--
Michael Johnson

a grand and informed reply to the devil himself! I agree with you about that but its good to see why. Its good to get some livley debate without namecalling..I also am of the opinon that people who have collected arrow heads shouldnt have to return them to the "local" tribes. the Farmlands in Ga where I lived often hundreds of arrowheads would be turned up by plows and somewhere I have one stashed(dont know where for the life of me) but I was told that the type of arrowhead that Ifound dates back 10,000 years, does that meet the criteria for a keeper? It was also rumored that the old oak trees at our house was the site of a slave burial plot for the plantation that was once there, it seems that the house we lived in was the "gate house" for the plantation.... So mant times I wanted to dig just to prove or disprove the folklore....
I am quite curious, in a different post I list the grave of a charles D. Smith who served with the 15th mass and was wounded in antietiam...lacking records of his injury I almost wish I could get an archologly department of umf to exume his body to see if he was one of many who were killed or wounded by friendly fire at that battle. but at this time there might be precious little left to examine.....

Seamus

"it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifing......nothing"
MacBeth

Civil War bones will not be auctioned Sunday

By KEVIN LANDRIGAN, Telegraph Staff
landrigank@telegraph-nh.com

Published: Saturday, Oct. 15, 2005

The bones of an unknown Civil War soldier buried in Virginia became, 140 years later, item No. 134-105A in an auction house catalog in Milford.

Veterans and state legislators expressed outrage when they learned of the planned sale of the soldier’s remains at an auction Sunday run by the J.C. Devine auction house – and now the remains will not go to the highest bidder.

Senate President Ted Gatsas, R-Manchester, said Attorney General Kelly Ayotte told him late Friday that she had spoken with a representative of the auction house, who had agreed to withdraw the bones from the auction at the Wayfarer Inn in Bedford.

“I’m just happy to report it’s not going to happen. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand the appeal for anyone to buy such a thing,

I read graphs 7 and 8 in that article and compaired them with my first post on this thread, then a lot of the other facts started to seem familiar - and it occurred to me that was one the sources was Major Reeder!

Great job, Major, sir!

At this time are their any movements to get the bones? by either the state or private individuals? this would make a great spot for a program like unsolved history...to help get the bones make an attempt at iding him and then having him laid to rest....could be a great finacial help in the fight to have someone like that aboard....

Seamus

"it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifing......nothing"
MacBeth

The military has pathology and DNA laboratory units dedicated to identifing remains - they work almost exclusively with remains found in Viet Nam and Korea, I'd guess because the families of those folks might still be around.

They have very advanced methods of identifing those if they can get DNA from a fragment - they can then compaire that to DNA of known family members.

You could search the 'net to find them, and they may have a specific suggestion or recommendation for you.

http://www.qmfound.com/mortuary-affairs.htm

You could start at the above link.

Great!

Good history on this, there is a lot of very interesting information linked to that page I gave you.

An excerpt:

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The actual foundation of today’s Graves Registration mission is more readily traced to the outbreak of the American Civil War. That tragic conflict elicited more sacrifice and accounted for more battle deaths than all of our other major wars combined. At the same time public sensibilities towards the treatment of dead soldiers appeared to be changing possibly in response to the sight of so many citizen-soldiers donning the blue or grey. Still, this heightened concern for the war dead did not automatically translate into an improved battlefield scenario. There the old tried and true methods of burial remained the norm. Almost invariably, the dead were buried by details from the line, right at, or very near the scene of the battle. When the armies moved on, those burial grounds with their temporary markers were left to deteriorate, leaving little hope of locating or identifying the grave of any given decedent.

Another factor contributed to the problem of identifying and locating individual graves. Burial "squads" were frequently made up of POWs, or other less than willing hands. Often illiterate or careless, the results of their actions were fairly predictable; the true identity of many of the dead was lost to error. During the action at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse approximately 1,500 men died; only a fourth of those were ever identified. (Roughly 58% of all those who died during the Civil War were positively identified.) Countless notices appearing in the newspapers of the time, asking for information about those missing in action bore witness to this legacy of uncertainty.

Other examples of concern over the Army's failure to provide adequate graves registration, as well as of the negative effect this lack of support had on the troops abounded. When the Union Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan River and entered Virginia on 4 May 1864, those soldiers were horrified to discover the bleached bones of comrades who'd fallen the year before lying exposed on the ground. At this point many of the troops searched through the remains hoping to discover clues that would designate the remains as those of departed friends. They looked for identifying marks on clothing and equipment, evidence of fatal wounds, and peculiarities of tooth structure as part of their search. (It is interesting to note that these methods of establishing identification would become part of standard operating procedure for 20th century GRREG personnel.) Finally, before moving into the Wilderness, those troops took time to bury the exposed remains. The fear of being listed among the "unknowns" weighed upon the combat troops. Even though the War Department did not require or issue any sort of identifying tag, the rank and file often took steps to ensure that their identity would be known should they be killed on the battlefield. Identifying markers carved of wood were carried by many soldiers, as were medallions bearing their names and other information. Prior to attacking the entrenched Confederates at Mine Run during the winter of 1863, the men of the Union Fifth Corps wrote their names on small scraps of paper and pinned them to their uniforms.

Still, the military hierarchy of the day apparently failed to realize not only the importance of some type of permanent identification for combat soldiers, but also the obvious need for specially trained units and personnel who could properly care for the war dead. On only one occasion, after the Battle of Fort Stevens outside of Washington DC in the summer 1864, did a group resembling a modern day GRREG unit come into play. A Captain James M. Moore, newly appointed head of the QM Cemeterial Division led a group of his personnel on to the battlefield after the fighting had ended. There they began a systematic search and recovery of remains and personal effects, eventually managing to identify all the remains. Their achievement of a perfect score was not to be matched within the U.S. Army for many decades. Unfortunately, that perfect score also failed to lead to the use of trained GR personnel on a routine basis. Despite this, the Civil War saw the QM Corps clearly established as the responsible agent for caring for the Army's dead. After the war, between 1866 and 1870, the Cemeterial Division disinterred the remains of nearly 300,000 war dead and laid them to rest in 73 newly created national cemeteries.

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