Government Hill resident finds tombstone buried in yard, and it's not the first

Cristina Sosa Noriega found this gravestone in her yard during a landscaping project. Cristina Sosa Noriega found this gravestone in her yard during a landscaping project. Image 1 of / 21 Caption Close Government Hill resident finds tombstone buried in yard, and it's not the first 1 / 21 Back to Gallery

SAN ANTONIO — A woman in Government Hill was working on landscaping in her yard this week when she found a tombstone for a 65-year-old man about four inches into the dirt.

Cristina Sosa Noriega, 37, said she doesn’t know whether any corpses are below her lawn, but she wasn’t surprised by the discovery — this isn’t the first gravestone she’s found on her property in Government Hill, a neighborhood near downtown and Fort Sam Houston.

“It makes me wonder how many more there might be,” she said in an interview with mySA.com. “I don’t plan on digging anymore in that area.”

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Noriega bought the home in 2004. Roughly two years later, she was away from her house when her niece and other family members dug up a rectangular block. That block had the names of three children who had died back in 1880s, Noriega said.

She previously found this headstone in her yard about 10 years ago.

She said it was creepy at first because her niece, Annie, shared the name of one of the children listed on the tombstone, Noriega said.

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The three infants’ names were Annie, Philip and Katie, Noriega said.

A year later in a different part of the yard, the family found the base of that tombstone.

Noriega said she believes the tombstones were moved from their original location, since the base and the rectangular portion of the tombstone were found in different locations.

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“It’s such a curious setup,” she said.

Noriega said the finds in her yard have spurred more questions about the history of the land she lives on.

Government Hill is a suburb in San Antonio that was developed in the "Gilded Age" of San Antonio, from 1890 to 1930. The history of Government Hill is closely connected to Fort Sam Houston, which was built in 1876. By the end of the century, Government Hill was home to more than 12,000 people, according to the San Antonio Office of Historic Preservation.

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