A Michigan boat captain, Jennifer Dowker, found a bottle with a note from 1926 while she was scuba diving in the Cheboygan River.
The note read: “Will the person who finds this bottle return this paper to George Morrow Cheboygan, Michigan and tell where it was found?”
The glass-bottom boat tour company owner said she wanted to clean the windows on the bottom of her boat and thought the bottle would pique her client’s interests, USA Today reports.
“I just collect little bottles that I find on the ground of the river when I am diving pretty often actually. I have a little double-headed axe blade that I found the last time I washed the windows.” Dowker said.
She found the green bottle on top of the fish bed. The bottle had a note in it.
“It was a pretty phenomenal once-in-a-lifetime find for a scuba driver,” Dowker said.
She posted the picture on her company’s Facebook page and it went viral.
“I woke up the next morning and I had a lot of messages from tons of different people saying ‘Oh this could be you know so or so. Honestly, my first thought was how I was going to find the time to do this, because I am a single mom with three boys running a business,” Dowker said as per USA Today.
However, it was a call Dowker received on Father’s Day that gave this story a happy ending. Jennifer Dowker was driving back from her father’s house when a Michele Primeau,74, called her to say that she was the daughter of the man who left the note in the bottle.
“She emailed me pictures of the letter and as soon as I saw it, I knew it was my father’s handwriting, and it was found in Cheboygan. He was born in Cheboygan and lived there until his 20’s. It was also interesting because he threw the letter in the river in November, and his birthday is in November,” Primeau told USA Today.
Her father passed away in 1995. But this note made a perfect Father’s Day present for her.