How One German Button Maker Searched the Rivers of the American Midwest for the Shells That Could Make Him a Fortune

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At the Smithsonian | June 25, 2026

How One German Button Maker Searched the Rivers of the American Midwest for the Shells That Could Make Him a Fortune

John Boepple settled in Muscatine, Iowa, where he produced pearl buttons made from freshwater mussel shells. His innovations brought economic prosperity to the town—and disaster to the local mussel populations

How an ebonyshell mussel becomes a button<br>© Historic Muscatine, Inc. / The National Pearl Button Museum – Muscatine, Iowa

How an ebonyshell mussel becomes a button<br>© Historic Muscatine, Inc. / The National Pearl Button Museum – Muscatine, Iowa

This story begins with a button maker and a box of mussel shells.

In the mid-1800s, the box in question somehow found its way to John Boepple’s button shop in Ottensen, Germany. Some sources claim the shells were harvested from the Illinois River and sent to Germany by a man who wanted an assessment of their manufacturing value. Others link them to the Mississippi. In many accounts, Boepple knew only that they’d arrived from a location 200 miles west of Chicago.

What he also knew—and what his competitors didn’t understand—was how valuable they were. Based on their density and luster, these mussel shells could be used to make high-quality pearl buttons. And pearl buttons could be used to make a fortune.

John Boepple circa 1891

The National Pearl Button Museum – Muscatine, Iowa

Boepple immigrated to the United States in the late 1880s, resolving to search for more of these freshwater mussels. At the time, several pearl-button factories were operating in the Midwest, but they were importing ocean shells rather than harvesting mussels from nearby rivers. As the story goes, the button maker was bathing in the Sangamon River when he cut his foot on something sharp.

“Upon examination of the cause, I found the bottom of the river covered with mussel shells,” he later recalled. “At last I found what I had been looking for.” These shells, however, were too thin. After searching for other mussel beds in nearby towns, he ultimately settled in Muscatine, Iowa, where he made his first buttons in 1891.

By 1905, Muscatine had dozens of factories and produced 1.5 billion buttons per year. “That’s kind of an abstract number until you do the math,” says Dustin Joy, director of the National Pearl Button Museum in Muscatine. If you piled up 1.5 billion buttons, each about one-eighth of an inch thick, “that’s a stack 2,900 miles high.”

At its peak, the button industry in Muscatine produced 1.5 billion buttons per year.

The National Pearl Button Museum – Muscatine, Iowa

In just a few years, the town doubled in size, becoming a central hub for button production. It also devastated the local mussel population. “It was a boon for this town, because it created a lot of jobs, provided a lot of prosperity,” says Joy. “But it was an environmental catastrophe.”

How pearl buttons were made

Muscatine’s button boom is now featured in an exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). Titled “From These Lands,” the show commemorates America’s 250th birthday by showcasing more than 600 items, representing all 50 states. Mussel shells and pearl buttons from Iowa, in various stages of production, are on display.

Mussels, drill bits and mother-of-pearl buttons. The mussels were collected in 1907 from Dubuque and Muscatine Counties in Iowa, and the buttons were created in the early 20th century.

National Museum of Natural History

For Boepple, buttons were the family business. At his shop in Germany, he had learned to craft them out of wood, shell, horn and bone. But pearl buttons brought in the biggest profits. When a German tariff put him out of business, Boepple became one of the nearly 1.5 million Germans who immigrated to America in the 1880s. “They each brought their own skills,” Joy says. “Mr. Boepple was a button maker.”

Boepple had little money and spoke poor English. But after securing a financial partner, he established a small plant in Muscatine, which became the foundation of a lucrative industry. Locals noticed his strategy—profiting from a free resource found in the river—and tried to copy it.

Mussels “essentially paved the bottom of the river in certain parts,” says John Pfeiffer, a research zoologist and curator of bivalves at NMNH’s department of invertebrate zoology. “The factories were positioned right on top of these really large mussel beds, because it made it that much more convenient to collect them.”

The cutting room of U.S. Button Company circa 1915

The National Pearl Button Museum – Muscatine, Iowa

Pearl buttons became a thriving industry, supported by clammers who used a variety of techniques to harvest mussels. Sometimes they would wade into the river, feeling along the bottom...