When jewelry shopping in San Miguel de Allende I had the best team, my three kids. The youngest knew all about stones and would enchant the female sales team asking questions about the origins of their jewels. My older son would do what he did best, act bored while thrusting his body weight against the counter in an attempt to nap. My daughter would simply nonchalantly check out the piece in review to utter “Mom already has something like that.”
It worked great and I’d get deep discounts just to get the army of Toones to stop disrupting the shop’s business!
However, while I was playing in the jewelry little league, an emperor and the richest woman in the US found the most storied, and best, jewelry purchase in Mexico!
Today in the Smithsonian sits an immense 21 carat, herbal green emerald ring known as the “Maximilian Emerald Ring” from its one time owner, Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph, who was installed as the French Emperor of Mexico in 1864.
During Maximilian’s reign the United States was in the midst of the devastating Civil War. Soon as the Civil War ended in 1865, the U.S. demanded the withdrawal of the French troops from Mexico and continued supplying arms to support Mexico since French Maximilian had supported the South.
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Tours given by Joseph Toone
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Joseph Toone is the Historical Society’s short-story award winning author of the SMA Secrets book series. All books in the series are Amazon bestsellers in Mexican Travel and Holidays. Toone is SMA’s expert and TripAdvisor’s top ranked historical tour guide telling the stories behind what we do in today’s SMA. Visit JosephTooneTours.com, also on FaceBook.
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