Man finds a 40-yr-old message in a bottle on fishing trip, starts search for 3-yr-old boy who wrote it

Fishermen enjoy catching fish, but sometimes, they also like to collect antique mementos. Jeremy Weir is a retired school principal and amateur treasure hunter. In Pearl River, he spends his time fishing and looking for things that could fit into his collection. So far, he has acquired rare pieces of polished rock, driftwood, and sometimes old bottles. “If I see an interesting bottle out on the Pearl, I’ll pick them up, check them out and occasionally bring them home,” he said. He found a message in a bottle written by a 3-year-old boy named David sometime in 1983.  As reported by Inspire More, the rolled-up handwritten note was neatly tucked inside an old Grolsch bottle with a rubber stopper, then tossed into the Pearl River in Mississippi. 

The bottle floated in the river for the next four decades and Weir was lucky to have found it. He washed away the mud and noticed a slip of paper wrapped in plastic inside the bottle. “I looked at it initially, and I thought it was trash. I noticed a little plastic baggy; it looked like maybe a calendar out of somebody’s planner, and it was dated 1983,” he said. Weir carefully opened the note, dated June 4, 1983, and it read: “To the finder of the mystery bottle, my name is David, and I live in Jackson, Mississippi. I am 3 years old. If you find my bottle, please call me at ###-###-#### – call collect. Good Luck and Happy Hunting.”

How intriguing is that? Weir contacted his daughter, who is an attorney, to help track David down. He called David, and it was a conversation both will never forget. “I said, ‘Is this David?’ He said, ‘Yes, it is.’ ‘I have something that belongs to you.’ I said, ‘I know this sounds crazy, but I found a bottle in the Pearl River today that has your name and phone number, and that you live in Jackson, Mississippi.’ He’s like, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, I’m going to put you on speakerphone; I want my wife to hear this. Would you mind repeating?’ I repeated and read the letter to him, and they were just blown away.” Weir and David have plans to meet up soon so he can give him back the letter. 

Another message in a bottle has united two teenage boys across the Atlantic Ocean, according to the BBC. Sean Smith, 16, had sent the note while on a vacation in the eastern US state of Rhode Island in 2018. His message read: "It is Thanksgiving. I am 13 and visiting family in Rhode Island. I am from Vermont. If found, email messageinabottle2018@gmail.com. Fast forward to 2021, when the letter was found more than 3,000 miles (4,820 km) away. Christian Santos, 17, retrieved the bottle while fishing with his cousin in shallow ocean waters in the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago in the mid-Atlantic. "I picked it up and looked inside, and there was a piece of paper in there," said Christian. "I thought it was interesting and went to show it to my mom."

Molly Santos, his mother, told him that the message came from near Massachusetts, where he was born before going to the Azores. The pair decided to contact the unknown writer by email, but Sean had long forgotten about the bottle and wasn't looking for responses. After receiving no response, his mother posted a picture of the note on Facebook, which garnered a lot of attention. Sean informed Molly about the finding of his message. "My first reaction was like, what the heck?" said Sean. This bottle was one of several others that he and his cousin tossed into the water. "A couple of them got found not long afterward, but then two and a half years later, I completely forgot we'd even done it," Sean said. Both Sean and Christain now have a lifelong memory and maybe a new friendship. "I think we will try to stay in touch." "It's a pretty special occurrence," Sean said.