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- Blackmore Museum, Salisbury
- Also known as
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Blackmore Museum, Salisbury
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primary name: Blackmore Museum, Salisbury
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other name: Blackmore Museum
- Details
- organisation; institution/organisation; British
- Other dates
- 1863-1902
- Biography
- Founded by Salisbury businessman William Henry Blackmore (q.v.) to house archaeological finds from Ohio, USA, and his developing anthropological collections, in 1863 and opened in 1867. After Blackmore's suicide in 1878, it was run by his brother, Dr. Humphrey Purnell Blackmore, a physician, surgeon and archaeologist, who was one of the founders of the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum which was primarily dedicated to local artefacts. In 1902 the two museums were amalgamated, taking the latter name. Following Humphrey Blackmore's death, a significant number of Blackmore Museum artefacts were distributed to other museums including the Smithsonian Institution, the Birmingham Museum, and the British Museum.
In 1931 the BM purchased from the Salisbury Museum the large group of Blackmore's American archaeological material in its possession. At the same time purchased by the BM in 1931 (this is registered in a separate register with 1330 numbers). A note in that register records that "the remainder of the collection, mainly ethnographical, was purchased by Mr H G Beasley for the Cranmore Museum at the same time". The ethnographic material was listed by Beasley in his register under the date 1.2.1931, and later came to the BM with the gift of the Beasley collection in 1944 (qv; this is now divided by geography and registered across the separate Ethno registers).
In 1932, Barbara Freire-Marreco Aitken (1879–1967), a prominent anthropologist who had worked with the innovative educator and passionate amateur archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett (1865–1946), secured a substantial set of Blackmore's papers relating to his activities in New Mexico for the Historical Society of New Mexico. This material also included some 112 photographs in carte de visite, stereoscopic, Cabinet and other formats. Blackmore's museum finally disappeared in 1968, and the remnants of his museum moved from its purpose-built setting adjoining the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum in St. Ann Street to The King's House in the Cathedral Close in 1981.