The tale of the Paterson

The tale of the Paterson Pearl begins on the muddy banks of

Paterson

's

Third

River

. It was there, in March 1857, in a stretch of the river known as Notch Brook, that carpenter Jacob Quakenbush bent down and scooped up a handful of mussels. What he found inside was a 93-grain freshwater pearl, approximately the size of a silver dollar links of london sale.

About what happened next, two things are known for certain. First, hordes of people descended on Notch Brook, giving the shore, according to one eyewitness account, "an appearance of camp-meeting time." During 1857 alone,

New York City

gem dealers received thousands of dollars' worth of pearls from the waters of

New Jersey

, setting off a kind of American pearl rush that in just a few years would deplete

New Jersey

's rivers of nearly all their freshwater mussels Laughing Buddha Charm.

The other thing known for certain is that Quakenbush sold his pearl to Tiffany & Co. in

New York City

a month after finding it for $1,240. From there, the trail of the

Paterson

pearl grows a little cool.

"There are no historical records of it leaving

New York City

," says Kathleen Moore, curator of content at the

Museum

of

Natural History

. "We are sure that Tiffany's acquired it, that it is big and that they paid a lot of money for it back then Bunny Pink Charm."

Although no one at the

American

Museum

of History wants to hazard a guess about the pearl's worth today, in 1908 Tiffany's gemologist George Frederick Kunz estimated the value of the Empress' pearl at $10,000 the equivalent of nearly $200,000 today Pig Charm.