Overdue book returned to New Jersey library after 99 years

March 10 (UPI) -- An 81-year-old woman going through boxes of her mother's belongings made a surprising discovery: an overdue library book checked out by her grandfather 99 years earlier.

Berkeley Township resident Mary Cooper said she was going through a box of items that had belonged to her mother when she came across the book, Home-Made Toys for Girls and Boys by A. Neely Hall, and discovered it had been borrowed from the Ocean County Library in March 1926.

Cooper learned her grandfather, Charles Tilton, had been the one to check the book out one year before he died.

"I thought, I don't have grandchildren, and my kids are getting older. Even if my son took it, I didn't know what they'd do with it," Cooper told CNN. "I figured it belongs to the library."

The Ocean County Library said the book's return comes at a serendipitous time, as the library system is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

Librarians said the facility no longer imposes late fees, but they jokingly estimated it would have racked up about $18,000 in fees over the past 99 years.

The book has a new permanent home in a glass display case at the Ocean County Library's branch in Toms River.