Earlier this week, researchers revealed the identity of a 19th-century body found inside a small casket under a San Francisco home last year. The child was two-year-old Edith Howard Cook, who died on October 13, 1876, just before her third birthday. Cook’s remains were left behind when 30,000 people, who were originally buried in San Francisco’s Odd Fellows Cemetery, were moved in the 1920s to Greenlawn Memorial Park. Researchers uncovered the young girl’s identity when they found a map of the old cemetery and matched it to a plot where her parents were once buried. Cook’s family gave her an ornate burial, clothing her with a white christening dress, weaving purple flowers in her hair, and placing roses, eucalyptus leaves, and baby’s breath inside her coffin. Last year at her reburial, hundreds of mourners came to pay their respects.
See Valerie Edwards, Perfectly Preserved Body Found in a Casket Underneath a San Francisco Home Is Identified as Girl Who Died Six Weeks Before Her Third Birthday in 1876, Daily Mail, May 10, 2017.
