Niagara Falls Museum, Historical museum in Niagara Falls, Canada

The Niagara Falls Museum was founded by Thomas Barnett in 1827 at the base of the Canadian Horseshoe Falls, where he fitted out a former brewery to show his private collection. Its cabinets held mounted animals of local origin, Native Canadian artifacts, Egyptian mummies bought by his son Sydney in 1854, mastodon remains from St. Thomas, and a 40-foot humpback-whale skeleton. The museum moved to a new building in 1937 and closed in 1998.

The museum was founded in 1827, making it the oldest museum in Canada. It was created to preserve the natural and human history of the Niagara region at a time when the area was drawing growing international attention.

The museum's name comes from its original site at the base of the Canadian Horseshoe Falls, where Thomas Barnett opened it in 1827. Its collection grew through the Barnett family's own collecting and purchases, including four mummies bought in Egypt by Barnett's son Sydney in 1854. The Niagara Falls History Museum acquired part of the collection in 2014, among them Skipper, Barnett's two-legged dog.

The museum closed in 1998, so there is no site to visit today; its building on Ferry Street no longer operates as a museum. The collection was sold in May 1999 to Toronto collector William Jamieson, and part of it, including Barnett's two-legged dog Skipper, went to the Niagara Falls History Museum in 2014. Look for those holdings there.

The museum's best-known holding was an unidentified male mummy bought with three others in Egypt in 1854 by Sydney Barnett. Sold in 1999 to Emory University's Carlos Museum, it was identified as Pharaoh Ramesses I and returned to Egypt in 2003, after about 140 years in Niagara Falls.