A Joplin native’s lifelong collection of minerals and rocks has been donated to the Joplin History & Mineral Museum, expanding the pieces that can be displayed and studied.
Ava Gager Smith, a 1957 graduate of Joplin High School, died in May at the age of 85 in Springfield, where she had lived for more than 20 years. In 1960, she married Robert Smith. She obtained a scholarship to college because of her mineral knowledge at that time, and he became a lawyer. They lived in several places over the years until they settled in Springfield. He died several years ago.
With her passing, she left two large gifts. One was her mineral collection, the other was $2.34 million bequeathed to The Library Foundation of the Springfield-Greene County Library District, which she frequently visited.
Chris Wiseman, curator of the Joplin Museum and an authority on minerals from the Tri-State Mining District, went to Springfield to meet with Smith’s neighbors, who were in charge of distributing her estate, to see the collection.
“She had a lot of big things all over her front room that were nice, big pieces and some flashy pieces. She had several nice, nice pieces of Tri-State minerals,” Wiseman said of Smith’s collection. In addition to what he saw in her living room, Smith also had large filing cabinets holding drawer after drawer of delight for rockhounds.
“Every drawer was just full of specimens,” along with a card catalog documenting the specimens, “and it was like, what? What? No one does that. And that, in the museum, is just as important as having the thing itself,” Wiseman said of the documentation that notes the types of minerals and the location where they are stored in the cabinets.
“Everywhere she traveled, she evidently would look for rocks and minerals,” Wiseman said. “So, she’s someone who had a lifelong relationship with rocks and minerals.”
Museum representatives were told by people who knew Smith that her fascination with rocks and minerals started when she was a child.
“She would go out and find shiny rocks, different rocks, and pick them up and then go to the library later and find out what they were. That’s what a lot of kids do is pick up rocks. Not many continue as they grow up,” Wiseman said.
But pursuing mineral knowledge earned her a college scholarship, “and it became a lifelong avocation, for her. She absolutely loved them, and she had specimens from around the world. I don’t know if she went to those places to collect them or got them by mail order, but even if half were brought in by the mail, the other half was extensive enough she went a lot of different places,” the museum curator said.
Her father built her glass-topped display cases to hold her treasures. She also had accumulated her own library of rock identification books.
“She was able to get a lot of stuff because of how long ago she collected. These things that may have only been $1 or $2 back then. As an example, she had some turquoise that now sells for $1 to $2 a gram and meteorites that would sell today for $5 to $25 a gram.
“Overall, there could be some value in there, (the collection) but we took it because it actually gives us a study collection that goes outside the Tri-State District.”
Wiseman said Smith deliberately chose the items she collected, which includes several examples of petrified wood that, over time, became encased in the shiny, glasslike silica finish that preserves the wood.
“There’s a difference between a rock collection and a mineral collection, other than just the name,” Wiseman said. “Anyone who picks up rocks has a rock collection. Ava collected specific minerals or specific rocks from different areas. She numbered them and catalogued them and kept them in different filing cabinets. So this is actually what we would call in the museum a study collection. She was very methodical in her collection.”
Her catalogued collection will allow the museum staff to locate the different minerals they or visitors would like to see. Staff also can switch them out in displays that feature pieces from the collection. The museum staff is still going through the collection to learn what it contains. A display of the items is not yet planned.
