Album of photographs documenting Ainu people, ceremonies, religious customs, fishing, hunting, and other activities. J. F. McClendon evidently assembled the material in order to try to show that Native Americans and Ainu people were not directly related. The collection includes commercial postcards published in Japanese and English and original photographs probably made by McCLendon.
Jesse Francis McClendon was born in Lanett, Alabama, in 1880. He studied zoology and invertebate zoology at the University of Texas (BS, 1903 and MS, 1904) and the University of Pennsylvania (PhD, 1906). After teaching at Randolph-Macon College (1907-1908), the University of Missouri (1907-1909) and Cornell University (1909-1914), McClendon obtained a position in the Physiological Laboratory of the University of Minnesota Medical School. He was appointed professor and head of physiological chemistry in 1920. McClendon taught for a period at the Biological Institute in Sendai, Japan, probably while still with the University of Minnesota during the 1930s. His book,
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Photo lot 102, J. F. McClendon photographs and postcard collection relating to Ainu people, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Donated by Jesse. F. McClendon, November 1970.
The University of Minnesota Archives and the Historical Collections of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia hold McClendon's papers.
The Entomology Department and Invertebrate Zoology Department hold specimens collected by McClendon.
Preliminary finding aid available in repository.