German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells

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.

Man I miss getting lost in something, this is passion right, a craft

The buttons are pretty too

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.

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.

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