The Gazette offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced. Clam shell gatherers were the front line in the booming pearl button business in 1897. Congress that ...

Fabulous tales of fortunes in 1924, freshwater pearls taken from Mississippi River mussels are still told along the shores of Lake Pepin and in the declining pearl button cities like Muscatine, Iowa.

Quincy has always profited from the Mississippi, but never so directly as around 1900. And it all started with the lowly freshwater mussel or clam. In 1897 pearls and things made from pearl shell had ...

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