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Wednesday, November 11, 2026Nov 11

Family offers reward for long-lost ring

ADVANCE FOR WEEKEND EDITIONS - In this Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016, photo, Ann Coleman, left, holds a photo next to her mother Virginia Austin in Murfreesboro, Tenn. The photo shows Austin as a baby with her parents father Francis Marion Snell, and mother Mattie Lou Jernigan. Family members of 100-year-old Austin hope to give her a special gift: the long-lost wedding ring of her mother. And they’re offering a $1,000 reward to get it back. (Helen Comer/The Daily News Journal via AP)
ADVANCE FOR WEEKEND EDITIONS - In this Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016, photo, Ann Coleman, left, holds a photo next to her mother Virginia Austin in Murfreesboro, Tenn. The photo shows Austin as a baby with her parents father Francis Marion Snell, and mother Mattie Lou Jernigan. Family members of 100-year-old Austin hope to give her a special gift: the long-lost wedding ring of her mother. And they’re offering a $1,000 reward to get it back. (Helen Comer/The Daily News Journal via AP) ADVANCE FOR WEEKEND EDITIONS - In this Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016, photo, Ann Coleman, left, holds a photo next to her mother Virginia Austin in Murfreesboro, Tenn. The photo shows Austin as a baby with her parents father Francis Marion Snell, and mother Mattie Lou Jernigan. Family members of 100-year-old Austin hope to give her a special gift: the long-lost wedding ring of her mother. And they’re offering a $1,000 reward to get it back. (Helen Comer/The Daily News Journal via AP)

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (AP) – Family members of 100-year-old Virginia Austin hope to give her a special gift: the long-lost wedding ring of her mother.

And they’re offering a $1,000 reward to get it back.

“What we’re interested in is, reuniting with this ring (with my mother). It was a gift from my grandfather to my grandmother,” explained Ann Coleman, Austin’s daughter.

Coleman’s grandparents, Francis Marion Snell and Mattie Lou Jernigan, were married somewhere around 1914 while seated atop a horse and buggy. The rose gold band the young farmer gave his bride was simple.

“It was flat, not rounded like a lot of bands, and there was no design,” Coleman explained.