The Eagle Diamond: The Mysterious Origins and Fate of the Most Famous Dihexagon in the World

The beautiful, powerful freedom of a large, soaring bald-headed eagle always amazes wildlife-lovers. It inspires the names in Waukesha County, Wisconsin of the town of Eagle, the unincorporated community of Eagleville, and the village of Eagle Centre in 1836 by the area’s first known visitors of European ancestry:

• John Coats (1812 - );
• William Carlin Garton (1810 - c. January 1879);
• Thomas Sugden (June 12, 1810 - August 27, 1887).

It perhaps is the reason for the same-year realization of the town’s first claim (by Ahira R. Hinkley) and first house (by Mr. and Mrs. Ebenezer Thomas). The village contrastingly owes separate politico-economic status to:

• The Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad’s southward expansions in 1851;
• The profitability of butcher, clothing, dry goods, grain elevator, grocery, hardware, harness, hat-making, and tailoring businesses by 1880.

Area history and community identity therefore center upon achievements in agriculture, construction, and enterprise. They explain:

• The persistence of a handful of family-operated farms;
• The preservation of the A.R. and Mary Cutler Daniels Hinkley, Friedrich Koepsell, T.W. Putnam, and Christian Turck houses and of Ward #3 District School;
• The relocation of arrowhead artifacts from Clarence and Lillian Armstrong’s farm to Department of Natural Resources offices;
• The reversion of the Bovee, Sprague, and Steinke farm to prairie.   

They likewise inspire present socio-economic dominance within the local economy of:

• Kettle Moraine State Forest’s Southern Unit;
• Old World Wisconsin’s open-air museum of nineteenth-century businesses (blacksmithing, general store, shoe-making, wagon-making), churches, farmsteads, and government (school, town hall);
• Paradise Springs Nature Area.

The bio-geographical configurations of the town, the unincorporated community, and the village therefore communicate no hint of bygone associations with the business of mining, purchasing, selling or stealing diamonds. And yet a diamond indeed generates one of Waukesha County’s and Wisconsin’s most famous and mysterious back-stories. It is responsible for the serious consideration of a permanent name change in nineteenth-century Eagle. Such a deliberation generally is not deemed radical nowadays in view of rapid, widespread re-configurations effected by the twenty-first century’s scientific advances and technological breakthroughs. But such pondering may be interpreted as a big deal in the 1870s and 1880s. Historians and locals realize that a bullet was dodged when Eagle was not renamed Diamond City.

The back-story’s action begins with summer well-digging in 1876. The casting commences with Charles and Clarissa Wood, Thomas Devereaux’s farm tenants. The location embraces today’s Diamond Hill, where Eagle’s smiling face-decorated, yellow water tower stands. The plot involves:

• Charles finding a brilliant, sunny-colored, twelve-sided gem 39.37 – 55.78 feet (12 – 17+ meters) down;
• Clarissa getting the jewel appraised;
• Milwaukee jeweler Colonel Samuel B. Boynton giving $1.00 for the stone, having colleagues in Chicago, Illinois analyze the suspected topaz, and refusing Clarissa’s $1.50 re-purchase offer.

It thickens with Charles and Clarissa losing Milwaukee County Circuit Court and Wisconsin State Supreme Court-filed suits for repossession of the glacial drift stone, initially called the Waukesha Diamond and subsequently the Eagle Diamond.

The Eagle Diamond’s back-story does not end quietly. It foretells dark events to come. It involves Samuel:

• Attempting to sell the $700.00-valued beauty for $1,000.00 to the State of Wisconsin;
• Convincing Tiffany & Co. of New York City, New York to buy the 16.25-carat giant for $850.00;
• Privacy-fencing Diamond Hill leases for chicken-farming;
• Prospecting through Eagle Diamond Mining Company;
• Reporting precious and semi-precious stone discoveries by 1883.

But Eagle is not called Diamond City, Diamond Town or Diamondville because of New York City-born mineralogist  and Tiffany Vice President George Frederick Kunz’s (September 29, 1856 – June 29, 1932) identification of African origins to Samuel’s discoveries, so different from Eagle’s yellow giant in:

• Color;
• Number of crystal faces;
• Size.

Two subsequent decisions become fateful. One deals with George:

• Accepting Hartford-born financier John Pierpont Morgan’s (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) $15,000 for 1889 Paris World Fair-exhibited, 1,000+-piece North American collections;
• Acquiring for J.P. 2,176 world-best specimens in 1900.

The other embraces J.P.’s giving New York City’s American Museum of Natural History:

• The Tiffany – Morgan collections;
• The 12,300-specimen collection purchased in 1901 from Philadelphia-born industrialist Clarence Sweet Bement (April 11, 1843 – January 27, 1923).

The museum’s non-functioning building- and display-alarm systems and open upper-floor window explain the above-mentioned holdings’ removal on October 29, 1964 by:

• Roger Clark;
• Alan D. Kuhn;
• Jack Roland Murphy.

The back-story’s plot leads to:

• Recovery of everything but Eagle’s Diamond;
• Three-year prison sentences.

The removal of the J.P. Morgan donations constitutes one of the most daring and lucrative of after-hours bank, jeweler’s, and museum visits. It is dramatic in the costliness of the removed specimens. It is historical in the recovery of:

• The 100.32-carat Edith Haggin DeLong Star Ruby from Burma;
• The 116.75-carat Midnight Star sapphire from Sri Lanka;
• The 563.35-carat Star of India sapphire from Sri Lanka.

It is impressive in the 48-hour round-up of three suspects. It is perplexing in the tracelessness of the Eagle Diamond. It leaves clueless gemologists and geologists intrigued by Canada’s, Michigan’s, and Wisconsin’s glacial drift diamond deposits. It means that Eagle’s Diamond is a joy forever to the few rather than the many.

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

The History of Waukesha County (1880), opp. p. 162: Public Domain, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/cu31924028871627/page/n172/mode/1up?view=theater

Waukesha County, southeastern Wisconsin: Royalbroil, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Christian_Turck_House_at_Old_World_Wisconsin.jpg

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Eagle, Waukesha County, southeastern Wisconsin: Royalbroil, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eagle_Wisconsin_Water_Tower.jpg

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