145-year-old casket with preserved toddler found beneath San Francisco home

[Jesus Malverde]

Source: LA TIMES

Construction crews in San Francisco made a macabre discovery earlier this month when they unearthed a child’s coffin beneath a garage being renovated, the homeowner said.

The lead and bronze 3½ foot-long coffin had two windows in it, revealing the perfectly preserved body of a blond girl in a white dress holding a rose, said homeowner Ericka Karner.

“I was shocked on one hand, obviously, because there’s a small child’s casket underneath the home,” said Karner, who with her husband and children are staying with family in Idaho while renovations continue. “But I wasn’t necessarily super surprised, because I knew the history of the area.”

Karner’s family lives in the city's Richmond District, which in the late 1800s contained a number of cemeteries. In the early 20th century, the city identified the area for development and moved thousands of graves south to Colma.



Read more: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-casket-san-francisco-girl-rose-20160526-snap-story.html

[brush]

1. Wow! The girl's body was essential mummified, didn't decomposed?

[secondwind]

12. The coffin was lead and bronze.. must have been very airtight?

[retrowire]

2. nightmarefuel nt

[dorkzilla]

3. Honor dictates that I post this

[47of74]

4. Several years ago in Dubuque...

There was a local developer who was going to build some luxury condos on one of the bluffs overlooking downtown Dubuque, Iowa. Until, that is, it was found that there were still human remains in the area from land that had been a cemetery up until the Civil War when the cemetery was closed and they went through and moved the bodies out to the then new Mt. Olivet Cemetery several miles to the south.

DES MOINES — A man stumbling upon a human jawbone while walking his dog was the first clue. Then officials uncovered something more: More than 600 sets of remains, long ago buried and forgotten, on the site where luxury condos were to be built.

The remains, found on land overlooking the Mississippi River in Dubuque, have left the nearly $60-million condo project in limbo, and the developer has sued the nuns who sold him the property. No one is exactly sure why no one knew the pre-Civil War remains were still there.

Whether the graves were lost because wooden markers deteriorated, stone tablets were reused or the sites were never marked in the first place, the excavation by the state archaeologist's office has put the project on hold for two years with no start date in sight.

The graveyard was the first Roman Catholic cemetery in Dubuque and possibly the state, with burials from 1839 until it closed in 1856. Ownership was transferred from the Archdiocese of Dubuque to Sinsinawa Dominicans Inc. shortly after World War II.

That was back in 2007. The site is still empty.

Here's a book that was written about the discovery and cleanup.

[jtuck004]

5. Cremate me and toss the ashes in a compost pile. It won't change the ph that much, and

the composting worms might could use the grit.

[Crash2Parties]

8. Or...

My final wish is for my remains to be scattered over San Francisco, Paris and Rome.

Also, I don't want to be cremated.

[jtuck004]

10. You could certainly make a big splash that way. n/t

[mdbl]

11. I like these solutions

Like Rodney Dangerfield said in Caddyshack - golf courses and cemeteries biggest waste of prime real estate.

[secondwind]

13. I want to be scattered from the Eiffel Tower, hopefully my child will not get arrested. hehe

Another alternative is the "green burial"... planting a seed along with the ashes and let a tree grow

[madokie]

18. Burn my old stinking ass

dig a hole and toss in the asses and then plant a sycamore tree there. My spirit will need a place to call home somewhere in the future
Sycamores grow fast and Big.

[KatyMan]

20. Us too

My wife and I don't want funerals or viewings or anything. Just cremate and dispose.

[3catwoman3]

23. I think open caskets and...

...viewings are absolutely barbaric and cruel. Who want that to be your last image of a loved one. No, no, no!

[Kaleva]

6. The body of our first president has been lost.

"The original mansion burned down in 1895 and it appears that Hanson’s crypt went missing until the 1980s, along with his body.

A Hanson relative, Peter Michael, wrote in a Maryland newspaper in March that Hanson’s grave site was found, and it was listed as sealed and intact in a 1985 state survey on the former grounds of Oxon Hill Manor.

But two years later, Michael said an archeologist’s survey, commissioned by a developer that bought the property, found that the tomb was opened and robbed–Hanson’s body was gone.

The grave site itself went missing a few years later when the property was made into a waterfront resort. The mausoleum was apparently paved over for a parking lot."

http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2012/11/americas-first-president-was-apparent-grave-robbery-victim/

[Jesus Malverde]

7. Neat story...nt

[whistler162]

14. Probably went on tour with his brothers!

[Kaleva]

22. Lol!

[colorado_ufo]

9. I was immediately struck by how much this child was adored.

A family could not bear to part with her, so they made every effort to preserve her. That casket must have cost a small fortune. They could not bear to put her in a dark box, so they incorporated windows to let in light, and possibly to see her.

Losing a child is the greatest loss in one's life.

[smirkymonkey]

17. That struck me too.

I would love to know the history behind this little girl's life and family.

[Javaman]

15. they should attempt a DNA sample and see if there any living relatives around.

that could possibly help identify her.

or...

just let the dead lay in peace.

I'm torn.

[Jesus Malverde]

19. Interesting info from the article

The city would not take the body and the current homeowners responsible for it.

[hunter]

16. The population of San Francisco in 1870 was 150,000

It may be possible to find out who the girl is.

Maybe the person who built that coffin built ships too.

[Jesus Malverde]

21. The aftermath

But Karner was soon surprised to find out from the medical examiner's office that the child was now her responsibility.

The city refused to take custody of Miranda, but the problems only continued when Karner tried to have the girl reburied.

Karner was told she needed a death certificate to obtain a burial permit for the girl. A Colma undertaker was willing to take the body - for a cool $7,000.

An East Bay archaeological company's price was even steeper at $22,000.

Meanwhile, Miranda's body was deteriorating inside her coffin in Karner's backyard because the seal was broken after the coroner's superior instructed him to open the casket.

'It didn't seem right,' Karner told the San Francisco Chronicle. 'The city decided to move all these bodies 100 years ago, and they should stand behind their decision.'

Karner, who is currently living in Idaho with her family while the house is remodeled, said she felt awful as a mother thinking of the little girl lying alone in her backyard.

She considered the girl 'part of her family now'.


City Hall finally put Karner in touch with someone who could help, connecting her to the Garden of Innocence, an organization that provides burials for unidentified children.

Founder Elissa Davey, who was able to secure the funds needed to have the coffin picked up and temporarily stored in a mortuary refrigerator in Fresno, said they needed to do the 'right thing'.

'That girl was somebody's child,' she said. 'We had to pick her up.'

'If people find out she's lying at a construction site with no one around at night, you can bet somebody is going to steal her. People into the macabre. Into witchcraft.

'I wanted her out of there.'

It was obvious to Davey that Miranda's parents loved her very much.

'Just by looking at the way they dressed her,' she wrote. 'Their sorrow was great. We will love her too.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3612053/145-year-old-coffin-young-girl-San-Francisco-home.html

When the city ordered the cemetery closed, they hired contractors to move the bodies to colma. Of course getting paid to move a body and not actually moving it is pure profit and many tombs had headstones removed and the bodies left behind. A number of discarded monuments can be found in Buena vista park where they were used for landscaping.

http://hoodline.com/2013/10/the-secret-tombstones-of-buena-vista-park