A DIAMOND ring lost for some 30 years was found last week by preservationists dismantling a 19th-century log cabin so it can be moved to a museum in northern New York.

    Roger Austin and his wife, Carol Austin, are two of the workers helping to take apart the 465-square-foot (43-square-meter) log cabin in Lisbon, New York, and relocate it to the nearby St. Lawrence Power and Equipment Museum.

    Carol said that a woman, Beverly Parmeter, who used to live in the cabin stopped by when she saw the cabin was being transported.

    “She stopped in and said, ‘Please look for my diamond ring my son lost through a crack on the floor’,” Austin said of the former resident.

    The museum bought the cabin from a couple who live across the road, but it was last occupied by Parmeter and her family.

    Carol, the wife of a museum board member, was helping her husband clear out the remnants of the cabin last week when she found the ring.

    It was in a bucket of construction debris.

    “She knew about where her son told her had lost it. He had taken it out of her jewelry box upstairs and dropped it through the floorboard and the wallboard,” Austin said.

    All it took was one phone call to Parmeter for Carol to work out the ring’s history — and be able to arrange to give it back to Parmeter.

    “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me,” Parmeter said.

    The Austins not only found Parmeter’s diamond ring, but also a book that had belonged to Parmeter’s daughter.

    Parmeter returned to her old home Thursday and was reunited with both the book and the ring, which the Austins had cleaned off and put in a jewelry box.

    Parmeter now plans to have the ring cleaned and then give it to her 7-year-old granddaughter as an heirloom.

    Roger said finding the ring was the “icing on the cake” for the log cabin project.

    Also during the deconstruction of the cabin, workers found a copy of a local newspaper dated March 29, 1861.(SD-Agencies)