The story starts with a German man, John Boepple, in his button shop in Germany. He immigrates to the US with the resolve to search for more freshwater mussels. So yes, it is relevant if you're interested in telling a story of the events that transpired.
Because the article is about more than just the buttons.
For Boepple, buttons were the family business. At his shop in Germany, he had learned to craft them out of wood, shell, horn and bone. But pearl buttons brought in the biggest profits. When a German tariff put him out of business, Boepple became one of the nearly 1.5 million Germans who immigrated to America in the 1880s. “They each brought their own skills,” Joy says. “Mr. Boepple was a button maker.”
My patrilineal ancestor came over somewhere around then (or, at least, between the end of the Civil War and then, records are not clear). It would be nice to trace that back into Germany but records don't seem to be easily available, if they even exist.
My Aunt spent her 'empty-nester' years tracking down our family. She found the immigration records and went back as far as the Habsburg monarchy. She went to the village where her grandfather was born and looked into the town's records.
She found people who looked exactly like her brothers (my father and my uncle)
To her, it was like a religious experience.
When she returned she said the village kept birth & marriage records to make sure new marriages were 'far enough apart'. I don't know if that's true, or just some color she put on the story.
I just tried looking up my last name on https://www.familysearch.org and got over 1.2M record results. daunting!