RELATED: Girl from 1800s found in casket in back yard of San Francisco home
How strange was this? "On a scale of 1 to ten -- eleven," said Frank Graziano, who discovered something during the work. "Well I thought it was concrete at first."
[Ads /]
But concrete does not have names or dates. "There is a baby in here, or was,"
Actually, it's just a tombstone -- the coroner's office confirmed -- left behind from what authorities believe used to be the Laurel Hill Cemetery, which opened in 1852 and closed in 1937.
RELATED: SF couple says they heard footsteps of little girl before coffin discovery
The bodies moved to Colma. If families did not want to move the tombstones, the city turned them into landfill.
Apparently -- this tombstone is one of those.
Work resumed Wednesday around the remnant from the lives of Charles Cooper, his wife Catherine Ryan, and their baby William Henry -- who died at 13 days old in 1862.
[Ads /]
As history pulled at Frank Graziano, he wrestled to free the stone beset by a sense of history.
"Maybe if we can get it out, we can give someone a part of their past," Graziano said. "Pretty awesome."
Finally, the stone was freed -- 155 years later, the past had its day.