r/UnresolvedMysteries • u/IGG_Center_Ramapo Real World Investigator • Feb 25 '25
John/Jane Doe SOLVED: Decorative Skull in New Hampshire Attorney's Office Identified as 19th Century Québécois Using IGG
In 2019, a student at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) presented her professor with a skull that had served as decoration in her father's Claremont law office for decades. Dr. Amy Michael, assistant professor of anthropology, brought the skull to the school's Forensic Anthropology Identification and Recovery (F.A.I.R.) lab, where students and professors used archival research and anthropological methods to try to identify the person from whom the skull originated. Eventually, they called in backup - researchers at the Ramapo College of New Jersey's Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) Center.
In July 2024, the IGG center sent a fragment of the skull to Astrea Forensics in Santa Cruz, California, to develop a DNA profile. This profile was then uploaded to GEDmatch Pro, and students in the IGG certificate program began their research. By connecting genetic matches and poring over a chromosome browser, the students were able to develop a hypothesis as to the origins of the skull. It is believed to have belonged to a child of Samuel Matchette (1781-1854) and Sarah Shields (1800-1848), though they are unable to identify the exact identity of the individual. Both Samuel and Sarah died in Quebec, Canada, which has historic ties to Sullivan County, New Hampshire - the county in which Claremont is located.
SOURCES:
- Ramapo College of New Jersey: Uncovering History: New Jersey Students Link Human Remains in New Hampshire to 19th-Century Family
- Forensic On the Scene and In the Lab: IGG Students Link Skull in Attorney's Office to Historic Lineage
- CTVNews: Decades-long mystery solved: Skull found in New Hampshire linked to child of Quebec family
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Feb 25 '25
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Feb 25 '25
How did he get the skull?
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u/First-Sheepherder640 Feb 26 '25
He contacted the stutterer from the Grave Robbing For Morons video
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u/seaintosky Feb 25 '25
Good on you for seeing that this person's remains deserved to be treated better, and doing something about it! Even if he didn't quite get his name back, he got some of his identity back and hopefully a respectful resting place.
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u/Sha9169 Feb 26 '25
in Quebec, Canada, a region with historic ties to Sullivan County in New Hampshire
What are the historic ties? This county doesn’t border Canada, so I’m curious.
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u/madamebutterfly2 Feb 26 '25
I believe a lot of Québecois used to migrate down to various parts of New England to work in industry there. There was/is a significant diaspora.
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u/SixthSickSith Feb 26 '25
Claremont was a mill town. Much of the workforce in New Hampshire's mills was made up of rural Quebecois families, largely from the farming communities around Sherbrooke and Trois-Rivieres.
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u/ZenSven7 Feb 25 '25
That’s interesting but who in the hell decorates their office with a human skull?
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u/Nearby-Complaint Feb 25 '25
I went to college with a dude who had an entire collection of human remains, so probably him
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u/afdc92 Feb 25 '25
How the fuck did he get a collection of human remains?
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u/Sethsears Feb 25 '25
It's legal to buy human remains in the context of medical specimens throughout much of the US, although laws can vary by area. Here's an example: real human bones for sale.
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u/wildwackyride Feb 26 '25
I just went through their entire faq and they don’t ever tell you where the human bones come from. It’s my first question yet totally missing.
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u/Nearby-Complaint Feb 26 '25
They're....'medical specimens', so he says
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u/wildwackyride Feb 26 '25
I’d like to know how or where they were acquired, or who they were or how long they’ve been dead but there was nothing. I did find an faq about the legality of hummingbird feathers because of course that was my second concern.
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u/Kevin_Uxbridge Feb 26 '25
Can't speak to this place but I will say our teaching collection in the arch lab came from a variety of sources, including a Roman burial from the middle east and a drug dealer named Wesley who'd turned up in a shallow grave.
One of our profs was on a call list for the local cops and when they found a body, my prof went out and gave them a quick assessment that it wasn't prehistoric remains. The chuck taylors he was still wearing were a dead giveaway. I became aware of Wesley when parts of him spent some time in our dermestid colony and were thence boiled in a big pot.
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u/DishpitDoggo Feb 26 '25
You win for the wildest comment.
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u/Kevin_Uxbridge Feb 26 '25
Hey, human bones are hard to source, you take what you can get. Was kinda wild to walk into the lab one day, smell ... something boiling, and see the proximal end of a human femur poking out. Just another day in the lab.
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u/Sethsears Feb 26 '25
I think this is the closest they come to explaining:
Prior to 1987, the majority of human bones for sale here and in other countries were prepared in India. In 1987, India stopped its exportation of human bones. Many US news sources phrased it as a ban on the sale of human bones rather than as a ban on exportation from one particular country with no effect on United States laws.
Once India stopped exporting human bones China took over as the main supplier of human bones to the United States. However, just prior to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China too stopped exporting human material. No other country has yet stepped up and material is much more scarce than it once was, but a decent number of bones from India and China still remain in the United States and may be freely sold.
Sometimes I've browsed that website out of idle curiosity, and I think that most of their bones come from India or China. The nature of their acquisition beyond that isn't usually super clear. They've also had some older European bones, sometimes from former eastern bloc countries.
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u/lizziexo Feb 26 '25
Amused and grossed out by them saying that because India and China banned exporting the US is scarce of human bones and no other country has “stepped up”. Stepped up?!?! 😭
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u/underwatermeadow Feb 27 '25
I'm having flashbacks to the tumblr "bone witch".
Worth noting that depending on where you are, it is very possible "legal bones" are actually stolen bones of marginalized people that have been "laundered". Grave robbing often happened in the US, especially if the dead were poor or non-white, and if they can't prove where they actually came from then there is some legal ambiguity. In places like India it's still a very common practice.
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u/als_pals Feb 25 '25
I’m sorry but “the bone room” made me lol
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u/Personal-Ad-9853 Feb 25 '25
Teachers of medical careers. I took paremedical courses at one point, and skulls were used in the demonstrations. The teacher said they were donated by a hospital (which they have people who donate their bodies to science.)
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u/BaconOfTroy Feb 26 '25
Except this skull was in a lawyer's office, not someone in medicine.
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u/Personal-Ad-9853 Feb 27 '25
I would agree, but sometimes, when teachers retire or get new demonstrations tools. Their old ones end up donated to other schools or sold, or I've even had a teacher tell me she picked up for free from a retired teacher (Those babies for child development that cry.) This could've ended up in his office in any odd way. Gift from a teacher, science, or doctor friend? It's so old you know he couldn't have had it all that time.
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u/BaconOfTroy Feb 28 '25
Oh no, I get that. I was just pointing out that this specific office happened to not be a teacher. I had to take forensic osteology during undergrad lol.
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u/FrankieSaysRelax311 Feb 26 '25
I always assumed that if I donated my body to science, it would be in a lab, secured. I never thought my skull could be on display in a classroom 🥴
& I had to buy my own placenta back if I wanted it, after giving birth.
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u/flaysomewench Feb 26 '25
You had to buy your own placenta?? That you grew yourself?? This is fkn wild
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u/Jessfree123 Feb 26 '25
I’m pretty sure my aunt had to have an extra skeleton to go to med school (she’s like 70 now)
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u/CowboysOnKetamine Feb 26 '25
Extra skeleton would be convenient if you ever break something or develop arthritic issues
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u/xtoq Feb 27 '25
Wait...she had to provide a skeleton as part of the application to med school or something?
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u/Jessfree123 Feb 27 '25
lol no I think it was acquire - like she had to buy some somewhere or something? This was in England back in the day and the more I’m typing the more I’m wondering if perhaps I imagined the whole thing
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u/OwlFriend69 Feb 27 '25
For what it's worth, Google and the good people at medicalsupplies uk seem to suggest that while it may not have been required, it's anywhere from "a good idea" to "recommended" so I wouldn't cast aspersions on your memory - at least over this. That said, a fake skeleton was probably close enough for doctor's work, although maybe a real skeleton was just the in thing for really rich med students.
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u/seaintosky Feb 25 '25
A few years ago the Conservative representative for my riding had a bit of a scandal when her boyfriend posted on social media that she had given him a human skull as a present. So, that's one kind of person, at least.
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u/Opening_Map_6898 Feb 25 '25
Not decoration per se, but I have one in my office that I use for teaching purposes.
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Feb 25 '25
I once went to tattoo parlor that had an kid skull with braces.
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u/beadhives Feb 26 '25
I had a neighbor who was an ENT who had a human skull in her home office. The top was sawn off and attached with little hinges and a clasp, so you could open it up and look at the inside.
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u/PetersMapProject Feb 25 '25
Lots of people decorate their homes with dead animals. It's called taxidermy.
This is just the next logical step.
Also, people who want to be able to stage a reenactment of Hamlet at short notice.
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u/PocoChanel Feb 26 '25
As in the excellent Canadian series “Slings and Arrows,” set in a theater company.
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u/jayhat Feb 26 '25
I mean as long as you got it on ok terms, I think it would be interesting to look at. Conversation piece. Definitely a bit morbid. Personally would not want one in my home haha.
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u/Tacky-Terangreal Feb 26 '25
Idk I’m the kind of weirdo that would do that. I remember a thread on legaladvice where a guy was asking how to mandate that his next of kin use his skull as a mantelpiece decoration
And I can’t blame the guy. The idea of future grandchildren or great grandchildren having my skull on display rather than an urn is rather entertaining
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u/CowboysOnKetamine Feb 26 '25
Ohh, I need to find that thread. I promised a friend that when I drop dead he can feed me to dermestid beetles and make jewelry out of me.
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u/jquailJ36 Feb 25 '25
Skulls are cool. And I've handed enough to know the prior owners don't care one way or another.
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u/JohnExcrement Feb 25 '25
I find “decorative skull” such an odd phrase…
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u/acidwashvideo Feb 26 '25
That means it's a skull for looking at, and not for playing with, kinda like the nice couch grandma never lets you sit on
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u/JohnExcrement Feb 27 '25
Gotcha. I actually have some, like Day of the Dead sugar skulls etc. I like skulls. But the phrase makes me chuckle because I think of an actually human skull that was designated as such. It’s funny to me.
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u/oofieoofty Feb 26 '25
That’s fucking sad considering most Québécois were Catholic and Catholics have/had a strong belief that bodies should be kept intact after death
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u/WiseMentor2946 Feb 25 '25
I remember reading about this case recently - such a fascinating use of forensic anthropology and genetic genealogy! It’s incredible how a skull that sat in a law office for decades was finally traced back to a 19th-century Québécois family.
What I find a bit weird, though, is how the skull ended up as a decoration in a law office in the first place. It makes you wonder where it originally came from and how no one questioned it for so long. 🤔
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u/Coro-NO-Ra Feb 25 '25
People used to be a lot more freewheeling with body parts
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u/ForwardMuffin Feb 25 '25
I got this mental image of a sepia-colored old-timey film that's sped up too fast advertising body parts for sale.
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u/DishpitDoggo Feb 26 '25
I had an image of people doing cartwheels with their body parts flying off.
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u/endosurgery Feb 25 '25
Hard to say. Could have been dug up by grave robbers and sold for dissection. That would lead you to a more modern legal sale of used anatomical specimens. All speculation without more information.
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u/murdermostbrewed Feb 27 '25
This is so cool! What prompted her to bring that skull in for testing?
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u/auroraborealisskies Feb 28 '25
it's amazing that this discovery could be made. I wonder how the person's skull ended up there in the first place?
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u/ladymorgahnna Feb 25 '25
Disgusting creepy places on the internet sell human bones and skulls. Uck.
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u/calxes Feb 25 '25
I really like seeing cases like this resolved in academic settings - it sounds like this would have been especially challenging given the age of the remains and chances that the person's results displayed some degree of endogamy typical in French Canadian families. Seems like a great case to help build IGG skills - impressive work.
I know there are many other similar cases (unfortunately) so I hope that this initiative continues.