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BLIND, BUT A PEARL EXPERT
Tennessean Hunts for and Deals in
Gems, Though Sightless Joseph Gossett, aged 42, of Clinton, Tenn., the center of the pearl hunting industry, is totally blind, but he hunts pearls as successfully as any of the thousands of moutain people who swarm along the Clinch and Holston rivers looking for pearls. Gossett was among the first persons to discover that the Clinch river pearl existed. He was then hardly 21. He sold his first pearl hunter for $50, and after that became an eager pearl hunter. While wading in the river he contracted malaria and lost his eyesight, but he did not give up. The next spring found him at the head of a gang of "Pearl Hunters" and he has since been persistent in his work. He finds the mussels with his hands or feet by the sense of touch. After gathering a quantity of the bivalves he will sit in his boat and open them, slowly feeling in the shells for the pearl. No sooner has he found one than he can estimate its value in every particular except as to color. For this element he trusts his sister, Miss Malinda Gossett. He lives in a surbub of the town in
a house which he owns. He buys many pearls. . He has bought from pearl hunters already this year $5.000 worth and states that he will handle four times as much before the year is closed. "I will go to New York next fall", he says. "I intend to buy a large stock and go with my sister. I am sure I would find a ready market instead of dealing with brokers as I do" New York Sun

Source: Naugatuck Daily News, Naugatuck, Connecticut, March 26, 1902