Nestled away from the bends of the Mississippi River and placed on a street once paved with shells, stands a white-columned house holding thousands of memories. Unknown to the average viewer, its foundations are built off not only brick and mortar but pearl buttons and ingenuity. In opposition to the flowing river, the house represents the unmoving connection Muscatine's citizens still have to their town’s shimmering past. 

Five generations of the Barry family, now known as the Sesslers, have lived in that house. Each generation has collected artifacts, mementos, and newspaper clippings that proudly relay their family’s continuous connection to Muscatine’s pearl button industry. Through an ancestor’s infamous machine, the Barry Automatic, their family was a key component in making the pearl button industry boom. Mary Alice and Richard Sessler have worked hard to maintain their knowledge about their family history, and they say that with pride.

But the Sesslers are nowhere near the only citizens in Muscatine who take pride in their city’s unique history. If one were to walk out of the Sesslers’ home and go a mile northwest, they would stand outside another building that displays its artifacts with pride and artistry. A showboat decorated with shining pearl buttons rows through the front window as small town scenes surround it. Upon walking into the National Pearl Button Museum, patrons can meet Ms. Vada Baker. She is not only a docent, a knowledgeable museum guide who has worked at the museum for 12 years, but an artist whose pearl button mosaics and jewelry line the gift shop of the museum.

The National Pearl Button Museum not only works to display thousands of shapely, colorful, and vintage pearl buttons but also relay the mass amounts of history and heritage tied to Muscatine’s pearl button industry, and Vada is as much of a museum staple as the mussels and shells themselves. Standing at the front with Vada, some newer faces also grace the entrance to the museum's decorated displays.

Hadley Hildbrandt, a history and anthropology major working as a summer intern, also works at the museum. While newer to some of the knowledge the museum showcases, Hadley grew up in Muscatine and has always had an interest in its history.

 “As kids we would go down the creek and find spent shells. It was always like, ‘oh, what is that,’” Hadley said.

Dustin Joy, the director of the National Pearl Button Museum for the past five years, can also be seen flitting around exhibits within the museum. He may not give tours as regularly, but his knowledge and love of the museum runs as deep as the Mississippi River. Growing up just across the river, he’s always known a thing or two about Muscatine's history.

All three work together to keep the museum perfectly prepared for the summer. Dustin may float around the front, but he spends his time working on outreach and any other new task his job offers him. After all, Dustin feels that, “One of the perks of this job is you never have to do the same thing time after time… so that’s something I really enjoy about it a lot.”

Hadley focuses on item accession and data entry for the museum’s vast array of artifacts, but she also helps out front when needed. Vada is a constant at the front of the museum, smiling, welcoming, and giving tours to visitors whenever they walk through the front door. 

As Vada starts her newest tour, Hadley takes over the front desk, and Dustin returns to his office. Vada walks slowly, but surely, making frequent stops to turn and talk with visitors about various displays that depict the process of ‘clammers’ pulling mussels from the Mississippi River, cutting button blanks from mussel shells, or even displays that talk about the dyeing processes.

“We're pretty proud of this little museum. We really are… Muscatine is a small town, but we've got a big history.” Vada states with a smile.

But before she talks about any crucial inventions and processes, Vada informs visitors about the man who started the pearl rush of the Midwest: John F. Boepple. Boepple, a German immigrant, may have died penniless and due to the same materials that made him famous, but that does not stop him from being a visionary in a town whose recently closed lumber industry left it yearning for something new. He introduced Muscatine to freshwater pearl buttons in 1890. 

The process may have been arduous and intensive, with each button needing to be handled over 30 times, but the materials were free. Each button was made from nacre, the hard, shiny substance coating the insides of these mussels. This nacre could also be referred to as mother-of-pearl.

The first dozen mother-of-pearl buttons Boepple made were sold for ten cents. They were also the first freshwater buttons to be sold in the United States and would change the course of history for Muscatine. Just like the Mississippi river bends and twists, the industry of Muscatine swerved from lumber to pearl buttons.

Vada relays that the pearl button industry doubled the town’s population from 9 to 18 thousand people as she gestures to images of a bustling riverbank piled with people and shells. Dotted along the sapphire water, fishermen in their vessels can be seen pulling strands of mussels from the mucky bottom of the river.

The industry was growing rapidly, but it was struggling. Everyone wanted in on this business endeavor that seemed to have endless natural materials just below the surface of the town's murky river. Countless button operations began opening across Muscatine to process all of the shells brought to land. Many couldn’t sustain themselves though.

The button making process was long. The blanks cut out of each mussel shell were nowhere near perfect. They needed to be shaped, carved, shined, and have holes drilled into them before they could turn into beautiful buttons, and doing everything by hand took time and energy. This perfect problem is where the Sessler’s and their ancestors come into play.

With the help of the Barrys’ initial machine, the industry skyrocketed. The Barrys continued to produce more machines that helped the industry grow. Dustin relays that in its prime the button industry made 1.5 billion buttons a year.

“So when we say we were the pearl button capital of the world, it's not really an exaggeration,” Dustin states.

The industry also produced more than just simple buttons. As time went on, companies diffused their creativity into these shiny pieces of nacre. Vada explains each company had their own book of dye recipes filled to the brim with enticing hues as she stops in front of displays of countless buttons sorted into color-coordinated jars. 

An industry exhausted

Throughout her tour Vada talks about how the pearl button industry had its downsides. It may have put Muscatine on the map, but it led to lots of waste. Holey shells that had already been used for buttons, or Spent shells, were tossed along roadsides and river shores. With a mirthless laugh Vada adds, “I was told a story once that there were farmers feeding it to their hogs, but then people started complaining that their bacon was tasting a little fishy.” The meat was not used and left on the river banks which led to a less than pleasant smell that permeated the town. 

As the population of mussels decreased in the river and the companies produced more buttons, sludge invaded the river. Without the natural filtration system from the mussels, the water quality got worse and worse. 

Vada walks the touring group to a nook in the center of the museum. She stands in the corner of the nook, gently leaning on her cane. Painted cardboard cutouts of fish with buttons attached as scales glisten above her. To her right, the wall text shows the size of mussels in development along with various host fish that are needed for each mussel’s life cycle. 

Mussels are like trees in a sense; their shells have a ring of nacre added for each year they have been alive. Vada gestures to a display that has some small mussel shells attached to it. At the start of the industry, the mussels harvested were huge and copious, people could be selective. By the end, ‘clammers’ resorted to small shells that were not sought out at the start.

The pearl button industry flourished for years, but with the amount of mussels harvested each year, it was hardly sustainable. The copious species of mussels in the depths of the Mississippi’s bend were being exhausted without any time to repopulate. At the start of the industry, the river hosted over 300 species of mussels. By the end, half were extinct. As Dustin relays, "It's also a story of this heedless use of natural resources.” 

New technology was also leading the pearl button industry to falter. Wringer washing machines were developed, but pearl buttons could not go through them without breaking. Vada tells patrons a story of how she remembers helping her own mother cut pearl buttons off their clothing. 

Doing this for every wash wasn’t efficient though, and soon new buttons made of thermoplastics gained popularity. Slowly, the pearl button factories in Muscatine turned to plastic button manufacturing. This switch, paired with the extensive harvesting of the fresh water mussels and waste, led to the downfall of the pearl button industry. The bustling shores full of ‘clammers’ and boats soon returned to a calm river, and the spent shells once lining the roads of Muscatine were paved over with asphalt. 

The last button manufacturing company, J & K Button, held on until 2024. While they did not produce pearl buttons at the end, they produced plastic ones that served as a consistent connection to Muscatine’s past. When the J & K factory closed, a loss was felt in the community, but even with the loss, Muscatine continued to thrive as an industrial town.

Mary Alice, Richard, and Vada all believe that the entrepreneurs brought into Muscatine through the button industry left an impact, and this led to an industrial community today. Carver Pump, HNI Corporation, Musco Lighting, Stanley Consultants, and more all have exhibits on the second floor of the button museum. The floor aims to show patrons how, even without the button industry, Muscatine’s industrial economy continues to thrive.

A shining future

As the tour ends, Vada goes back behind the front desk, reclaims her chair from Hadley, and begins to work on more art pieces. In the coming months, 14 cruise ships will pass through Muscatine, each having countless visitors to visit the National Pearl Button Museum. So, Vada has to be ready. She prepares countless pieces so when visitors come sailing through the museum’s doors, they can leave with not only a greater knowledge of this town’s history but some pieces of Vada’s art made with pearl buttons of their own.

Almost like finding a perfectly round pearl in the scrappiest of river shells, each time this history appears in the present it is met with awe. The pearl button industry may be gone, but the reach and impact it still has today is limitless to the people of Muscatine.

Muscatine’s history is still intertwined into peoples’ current lives and continues to influence new patrons from all over the world who come to learn about the town’s intriguing past. The industry may be gone, but it serves as a source of entertainment, art, income, and connection.

Through directing the museum, Dustin has been able to continue to spread the knowledge of Muscatine’s history to new people and expand his own. It has also pulled Hadley back in through being not only a source for research but opportunity for her majors. Both of them grew up being influenced by the dwindling industry and its historical presence in Muscatine. That influence, along with their love of history, has kept them tied to the pearl button industry today, and they both take pride in the work they do at the National Pearl Button Museum.

Vada has plenty of ties to the industry through all of the tours she’s given and friends she has made, but she has also stayed connected through her artwork and new uses for these old buttons. She has taken the leftovers from a wasteful industry and is working to use them consciously. For her, the pearl button industry is not solely about the historical impacts but the environmental and artistic ones as well.

And of course Mary Alice and Richard are still integrally connected to these glistening stories. They stay connected through using their home as a community meeting ground: hosting political events and teaching both art and piano classes. 

Each week soft piano music and laughter can be heard from the Sesslers’ basement. As Richard teaches piano, Mary Alice teaches art, and kids create in different ways. Mary Alice’s students use more than just buttons as their medium; they sculpt, draw, paint, and craft to make the special projects she plans each week. 

These artistic teaching moments also allow them to continue to spread their family history and stay as connected to their community as their ancestors before them. Their family may no longer be manufacturing moguls, but they have touched a lot of lives over the years with their influence.