Mystery girl found in coffin came from a fascinating and influential San Francisco family

The homes and businesses that surrounded the Columbarium used to be the grounds for this Big Four cemetery, which opened in 1865 and belonged to the Order of Odd Fellows. This is the cemetery where Edith Howard Cook was left behind when bodies were exhumed in the early 1900s. less The homes and businesses that surrounded the Columbarium used to be the grounds for this Big Four cemetery, which opened in 1865 and belonged to the Order of Odd Fellows. This is the cemetery where Edith Howard ... more Photo: Wikimedia Commons Photo: Wikimedia Commons Image 1 of / 25 Caption Close Mystery girl found in coffin came from a fascinating and influential San Francisco family 1 / 25 Back to Gallery

When Horatio and Edith Cook’s two-year-old daughter died in 1876, they placed a death notice in the San Francisco Bulletin.

"In this city, October 13, Edith Howard, daughter of Horatio N. and Edith Cook, aged 2 years and 10 months," it reads.

The Cooks buried little Edith, their only daughter, in a bronze coffin in the Odd Fellows Cemetery near Lone Mountain. In her hands, they tucked a red rose, and in her curly blond hair, they wove lavender.

The discovery of little Edith’s coffin, buried for decades under a San Francisco home and uncovered last year by a work crew, launched an investigation into the identity of the child. On Tuesday, the nonprofit Garden of Innocence project announced she was Edith Howard Cook, a suspicion founded in Odd Fellows documents and confirmed by a DNA test with a living Cook relative.

The tragic death came early in the marriage of the Cooks, the first major episode in the illustrious, marvelous and sometimes strange family history of one of early San Francisco's most colorful families — a story pieced together through city directories, old newspaper clippings and the U.S. census.

When Edith was born, the Cooks were rising to prominence. Her father was the grandly named Horatio Nelson Cook, son of an English sea captain. At just 17, Cook founded a tannery and leather manufacturing business. He called it H.N. Cook Belting Company, and it was an instant success. He won contracts to supply San Francisco with fire buckets, leather goods and hoses. Ten years later, the 1870 census lists Horatio’s personal wealth at $4,000.

That same year, 27-year-old Horatio married 19-year-old Edith Scooffy, the daughter of well-heeled Greek immigrant family. The pair were quite the duo, regulars in the Chronicle’s society stories, and Horatio was soon appointed the Greek consul in San Francisco. The Cooks made their home at 635 Sutter St., today the White Horse Restaurant and Pub near Union Square.

Had young Edith grown to adulthood, she would have been surrounded by wild and brilliant siblings. Two years after Edith’s death, another daughter was born, the soon-to-be-famed Ethel Cook. She was called the most beautiful woman in America by a Russian nobleman — and it’s little wonder she was the most talked-about young lady in the city.

“She is remarkably handsome, inheriting her exquisite coloring, patrician features and distinguished bearing from her noble Greek ancestors on her mother’s side,” the San Francisco Call wrote.

Ethel wed first in Geneva, but soon procured a divorce because her husband “was always hanging about the house.” She set her sights on Ross Ambler Curran, a wealthy East Coaster. He too was newly separated; his ex-wife Elise Curran wed his brother Guernsey with the ink barely dry on the divorce papers.

The Curran family drama kept Ethel Cook in the papers too. When she and her husband arrived in Europe in 1911 on their honeymoon, they crossed paths with Elise and Guernsey.

“The arrival in Paris of a California beauty, the former Miss Ethel Cook ... synchronizes with the declaration of open warfare,” the Call breathlessly reported.

“Both have their adherents,” the paper wrote, “and partisans are called Cookites and Curranites, respectively.”

Meanwhile, Ethel’s brother Clifford was also making a stir in Paris. The young Cook heir had arrived in France the year before and made his mark by persuading “the municipal authorities of Paris to let him sand blast the City Hall, which, like many other Parisian buildings, had not been cleaned since they were built.” Once a test on a private dwelling was deemed successful, Clifford was allowed to sand-blast clean “many of the famous buildings of Paris,” wrote the Chronicle.

After his triumph in Paris, Clifford returned home to San Francisco, where he ran his father’s business until his death from pneumonia in 1927.

Death, sadly, came much sooner for Horatio Nelson Cook. He died when he was just 48 after suffering a stroke. The Oct. 15, 1891 San Francisco Call honored him in a lengthy obituary.

“He was a man of sound and fine thought, pure and wholesome feelings, high and noble aims, clear perceptions, diversified knowledge, remarkable conversational gifts, and full of stingless wit and humor,” the paper eulogized.

“His loss will be generally and deeply felt.”

Death did not curtail the legacy of the Cook family in the Bay Area, however. H.N. Cook Belting Company still exists; today, it’s the Hoffmeyer Company, a business that manufactures industrial equipment like conveyor belts.