5 ms·

German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells

163 points by bookofjoe 4mo ago

waltbosz 4mo ago
I went to Muscatine, Iowa on a work trip once. There was a restaurant there called Button Factory. It was housed in a former button factory. Pretty old building. The bar top had an epoxy inlay with embedded buttons that were produced in the factory. The meal was pretty good. The restaurant closed in 2012.
- froindt 4mo ago
  There was a button museum at the time, though I never made it in. I'm not sure if the museum is in the same spot as the restaurant was, as I was there in 2017. One block over from the museum, there was recently a partial building collapse. 20 buildings were evacuated and 17 are still not able to be occupied.
  - iamflimflam1 4mo ago
    Reminds me of the famous Keswick pencil museum: https://www.derwentart.com/en-gb/c/about/company/derwent-pencil-museum https://www.derwentart.com/en-gb/c/about/company/derwent-pen...
  - waltbosz 4mo ago
    I think the museum is a different spot nearby. I found the restaurant on google street view, the pictures go back to 2008! https://maps.app.goo.gl/UxWzN5bcd4cLG6eH9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/UxWzN5bcd4cLG6eH9
- ourmandave 4mo ago
  I grew up in Muscatine along the river and always wondered why the shore was littered with shells with holes in them. As a kid, being told there used to be a button factory was good enough for me. I should visit the museum some day.
- oniony 4mo ago
  Perhaps Joe stopped pushing that button with his left hand.
josefritzishere 4mo ago
TLDR: Consequently many freshwater mussel species are now extinct https://www.fws.gov/press-release/2023-10/21-species-delisted-endangered-species-act-due-extinction https://www.fws.gov/press-release/2023-10/21-species-deliste...
- close04 4mo ago
  > TLDR: Consequently many freshwater mussel species are now extinct The problem with the DR part of TLDR is that you miss a lot of detail. There are more factors than just the button industry. > To survive past the larvae stage, they must become parasites that attach themselves to fish. If the fish populations are declining, that oftentimes has an indirect effect on mussel abundance > the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deepened the rivers and constructed a system of dams, destroying the habitats of mussels that had evolved to live in shallower waters. > Increasingly polluted waters also took a toll.
  - ab_goat 4mo ago
    Agreed. Massachusetts has a nice page about the Eastern Pearlshell. https://www.mass.gov/info-details/eastern-pearlshell https://www.mass.gov/info-details/eastern-pearlshell In the town of Sandisfield MA, I've found live mussels in the Clam River - which was named due mistakenly identity.
  - pimlottc 4mo ago
    DR?
    - arend321 4mo ago
      Didn't read
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    - bookofjoe 4mo ago
      This comment interests me. Over the 10 years I've frequented HN* regularly (usually multiple times daily), I too have been occasionally confounded by new-to-me abbreviations/acronyms, such that I've Googled them to find their meaning. I can't imagine asking the meaning of an such an unknown in a comment, for two reasons: 1. An answer depends on someone else's effort/time to furnish it. Why expect/hope someone's feeling generous enough to spend theirs since you're not willing to spend yours? 2. You have to revisit your query to see if someone has answered it; if not, you either abandon your quest or repeatedly revisit the unknown. *Hacker News
del82 4mo ago
I recently learned about using mussels for buttons when I visited the Mississippi River Museum in Dubuque, Iowa and have been wondering since: can Zebra Mussels be used for buttons? That would create (even more) economic incentive to go after them.
- giarc 4mo ago
  As noted in the article, plastic buttons displaced buttons made from clamshells long ago. I doubt a market for zebra mussel buttons could make any dent on the population.
  - fmajid 4mo ago
    Premium shirts still have shell buttons. Zebra mussels are too small to make buttons, however.
    - kevin_thibedeau 4mo ago
      I have one shell button shirt. They're annoyingly thin.
      - fmajid 4mo ago
        Yes, cheaper ones can be very thin, to save on material and produce twice as many buttons. The trick to identify genuine shell buttons is to to touch one against your upper lip. A shell button will feel cool to the touch, a plastic one won't.
    - stronglikedan 4mo ago
      small, or thin? they look wide enough when I pull up some images, but it's hard to gauge how thin they are
- Broken_Hippo 4mo ago
  In college, I worked as a lab assistant for a professor studying them. I spent a lot of time counting microscopic young, scraping adults off of traps, measuring and weighing them before cracking them open to scoop out their insides and weighing them. These little fellows are, in general, small. I guess they can get 50mm (2in), but most aren't that large and they have thin shells. Further, I'd be somewhat afraid that creating products from them would spread the invasive species even further. The professor I worked for studied them because of their invasiveness - the lakes he set traps on were obviously spread by people. They spread easily by the water in boats - microscopic young means people don't know they spread them.
whyage 4mo ago
Is the fact that he was of German descent material to how the events transpired? Not sure why it's even mentioned in the headline.
- fusslo 4mo ago
  I think it's because it's the Smithsonian magazine. Smithsonian celebrates the origins of people and things that shaped some part of American history. It's significant that "Boepple immigrated to the United States in the late 1880s, resolving to search for more of these freshwater mussels." And he was German. Lots of Germans emigrated to the USA, especially around that time. so it's important context of who this man was
  - pfdietz 4mo ago
    My patrilineal ancestor came over somewhere around then (or, at least, between the end of the Civil War and then, records are not clear). It would be nice to trace that back into Germany but records don't seem to be easily available, if they even exist.
    - fusslo 4mo ago
      My Aunt spent her 'empty-nester' years tracking down our family. She found the immigration records and went back as far as the Habsburg monarchy. She went to the village where her grandfather was born and looked into the town's records. She found people who looked exactly like her brothers (my father and my uncle) To her, it was like a religious experience. When she returned she said the village kept birth & marriage records to make sure new marriages were 'far enough apart'. I don't know if that's true, or just some color she put on the story. I just tried looking up my last name on https://www.familysearch.org https://www.familysearch.org and got over 1.2M record results. daunting!
- madmads 4mo ago
  The story starts with a German man, John Boepple, in his button shop in Germany. He immigrates to the US with the resolve to search for more freshwater mussels. So yes, it is relevant if you're interested in telling a story of the events that transpired.
ge96 4mo ago
Man I miss getting lost in something, this is passion right, a craft The buttons are pretty too
cma5 4mo ago
When you translate Johns surname into German, you get Böppel, which is slang for sth. small which you don‘t know the exact word for. So basically Böppel was making Böppel.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- n2d4 4mo ago
  Nominative determinism! The hypothesis that people tend to do things that remind them of their own names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
felix-the-cat 4mo ago
Some of this old stuff is really interesting - I used to live in Wisconsin and there was this place called “Crex Meadows” near my house which was a wildlife area but the name seemed so weird I looked it up and it used to be a grassland where the Crex carpet company farmed grass for making carpets. I had no idea they used to make carpet out of grass fibers. Relevant link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crex_Carpet_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crex_Carpet_Company
hankbond 4mo ago
Very well written article. Had a natural feel to it that was engaging and relaxing. The broader point of just having complete abandon for natural resources when manufacturing was certainly of the era (not that it has directionally changed much).
tiahura 4mo ago
The French and German history of the upper Mississippi is full of interesting stuff that's being forgotten.
DonHopkins 4mo ago
Mister Lossoff has entered the chat, with his famous collection of Distinguished Buttons: https://youtu.be/h-QgWOSVKm4?t=724 https://youtu.be/h-QgWOSVKm4?t=724

163 points by bookofjoe 4mo ago

I went to Muscatine, Iowa on a work trip once. There was a restaurant there called Button Factory. It was housed in a former button factory. Pretty old building. The bar top had an epoxy inlay with embedded buttons that were produced in the factory. The meal was pretty good. The restaurant closed in 2012.

froindt 4mo ago
There was a button museum at the time, though I never made it in. I'm not sure if the museum is in the same spot as the restaurant was, as I was there in 2017. One block over from the museum, there was recently a partial building collapse. 20 buildings were evacuated and 17 are still not able to be occupied.
- iamflimflam1 4mo ago
  Reminds me of the famous Keswick pencil museum: https://www.derwentart.com/en-gb/c/about/company/derwent-pencil-museum https://www.derwentart.com/en-gb/c/about/company/derwent-pen...
- waltbosz 4mo ago
  I think the museum is a different spot nearby. I found the restaurant on google street view, the pictures go back to 2008! https://maps.app.goo.gl/UxWzN5bcd4cLG6eH9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/UxWzN5bcd4cLG6eH9
ourmandave 4mo ago
I grew up in Muscatine along the river and always wondered why the shore was littered with shells with holes in them. As a kid, being told there used to be a button factory was good enough for me. I should visit the museum some day.
oniony 4mo ago
Perhaps Joe stopped pushing that button with his left hand.

josefritzishere 4mo ago

TLDR: Consequently many freshwater mussel species are now extinct https://www.fws.gov/press-release/2023-10/21-species-delisted-endangered-species-act-due-extinction https://www.fws.gov/press-release/2023-10/21-species-deliste...

close04 4mo ago
> TLDR: Consequently many freshwater mussel species are now extinct The problem with the DR part of TLDR is that you miss a lot of detail. There are more factors than just the button industry. > To survive past the larvae stage, they must become parasites that attach themselves to fish. If the fish populations are declining, that oftentimes has an indirect effect on mussel abundance > the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deepened the rivers and constructed a system of dams, destroying the habitats of mussels that had evolved to live in shallower waters. > Increasingly polluted waters also took a toll.
- ab_goat 4mo ago
  Agreed. Massachusetts has a nice page about the Eastern Pearlshell. https://www.mass.gov/info-details/eastern-pearlshell https://www.mass.gov/info-details/eastern-pearlshell In the town of Sandisfield MA, I've found live mussels in the Clam River - which was named due mistakenly identity.
- pimlottc 4mo ago
  DR?
  - arend321 4mo ago
    Didn't read
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - bookofjoe 4mo ago
    This comment interests me. Over the 10 years I've frequented HN* regularly (usually multiple times daily), I too have been occasionally confounded by new-to-me abbreviations/acronyms, such that I've Googled them to find their meaning. I can't imagine asking the meaning of an such an unknown in a comment, for two reasons: 1. An answer depends on someone else's effort/time to furnish it. Why expect/hope someone's feeling generous enough to spend theirs since you're not willing to spend yours? 2. You have to revisit your query to see if someone has answered it; if not, you either abandon your quest or repeatedly revisit the unknown. *Hacker News

del82 4mo ago

I recently learned about using mussels for buttons when I visited the Mississippi River Museum in Dubuque, Iowa and have been wondering since: can Zebra Mussels be used for buttons? That would create (even more) economic incentive to go after them.

giarc 4mo ago
As noted in the article, plastic buttons displaced buttons made from clamshells long ago. I doubt a market for zebra mussel buttons could make any dent on the population.
- fmajid 4mo ago
  Premium shirts still have shell buttons. Zebra mussels are too small to make buttons, however.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4mo ago
    I have one shell button shirt. They're annoyingly thin.
    - fmajid 4mo ago
      Yes, cheaper ones can be very thin, to save on material and produce twice as many buttons. The trick to identify genuine shell buttons is to to touch one against your upper lip. A shell button will feel cool to the touch, a plastic one won't.
  - stronglikedan 4mo ago
    small, or thin? they look wide enough when I pull up some images, but it's hard to gauge how thin they are
Broken_Hippo 4mo ago
In college, I worked as a lab assistant for a professor studying them. I spent a lot of time counting microscopic young, scraping adults off of traps, measuring and weighing them before cracking them open to scoop out their insides and weighing them. These little fellows are, in general, small. I guess they can get 50mm (2in), but most aren't that large and they have thin shells. Further, I'd be somewhat afraid that creating products from them would spread the invasive species even further. The professor I worked for studied them because of their invasiveness - the lakes he set traps on were obviously spread by people. They spread easily by the water in boats - microscopic young means people don't know they spread them.

whyage 4mo ago

Is the fact that he was of German descent material to how the events transpired? Not sure why it's even mentioned in the headline.

fusslo 4mo ago
I think it's because it's the Smithsonian magazine. Smithsonian celebrates the origins of people and things that shaped some part of American history. It's significant that "Boepple immigrated to the United States in the late 1880s, resolving to search for more of these freshwater mussels." And he was German. Lots of Germans emigrated to the USA, especially around that time. so it's important context of who this man was
- pfdietz 4mo ago
  My patrilineal ancestor came over somewhere around then (or, at least, between the end of the Civil War and then, records are not clear). It would be nice to trace that back into Germany but records don't seem to be easily available, if they even exist.
  - fusslo 4mo ago
    My Aunt spent her 'empty-nester' years tracking down our family. She found the immigration records and went back as far as the Habsburg monarchy. She went to the village where her grandfather was born and looked into the town's records. She found people who looked exactly like her brothers (my father and my uncle) To her, it was like a religious experience. When she returned she said the village kept birth & marriage records to make sure new marriages were 'far enough apart'. I don't know if that's true, or just some color she put on the story. I just tried looking up my last name on https://www.familysearch.org https://www.familysearch.org and got over 1.2M record results. daunting!
madmads 4mo ago
The story starts with a German man, John Boepple, in his button shop in Germany. He immigrates to the US with the resolve to search for more freshwater mussels. So yes, it is relevant if you're interested in telling a story of the events that transpired.

ge96 4mo ago

Man I miss getting lost in something, this is passion right, a craft The buttons are pretty too

cma5 4mo ago

When you translate Johns surname into German, you get Böppel, which is slang for sth. small which you don‘t know the exact word for. So basically Böppel was making Böppel.

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
n2d4 4mo ago
Nominative determinism! The hypothesis that people tend to do things that remind them of their own names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism

felix-the-cat 4mo ago

Some of this old stuff is really interesting - I used to live in Wisconsin and there was this place called “Crex Meadows” near my house which was a wildlife area but the name seemed so weird I looked it up and it used to be a grassland where the Crex carpet company farmed grass for making carpets. I had no idea they used to make carpet out of grass fibers. Relevant link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crex_Carpet_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crex_Carpet_Company

hankbond 4mo ago

Very well written article. Had a natural feel to it that was engaging and relaxing. The broader point of just having complete abandon for natural resources when manufacturing was certainly of the era (not that it has directionally changed much).

tiahura 4mo ago

The French and German history of the upper Mississippi is full of interesting stuff that's being forgotten.

DonHopkins 4mo ago

Mister Lossoff has entered the chat, with his famous collection of Distinguished Buttons: https://youtu.be/h-QgWOSVKm4?t=724 https://youtu.be/h-QgWOSVKm4?t=724