Mister Lossoff has entered the chat, with his famous collection of Distinguished Buttons:
German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells
51–54 of 54 posts
Re: German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 feeli…
The comment was edited, originally it said "The problem with the DR part is that you miss a lot of detail" and I thought it was perhaps some term of art regarding endangered species or conservation. Anyhow, I believe it always adds value to bring clarifications "in-line" to the original thread so everyone reading it can gain the benefit of knowledge, instead of requiring every reader look up something on their own.
I agree with you. Still, you're required to hope someone has enough good will and energy and time to do a solid for the HN readership if you take this approach. I'm not wired to be passive; for me, hope is not a strategy.
Re: German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Premium shirts still have shell buttons. Zebra mussels are too small to make buttons, however.
I have one shell button shirt. They're annoyingly thin.
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.
Re: German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
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 and got over 1.2M record results. daunting!