Colma Historical Museum

The tower on the left of the photo is the entrance mentioned in marker text, the entrance to the museum is the area described as the boarding area for the electric railway, and the bell is on the ground between the two towers.

See Photo #5

Cemetery Worker's Bell This bell used to hang in the tower of what is now the museum building. It was rung to signal workers of an approaching funeral. Upon hearing the bell the workers would change into their uniforms and participate in the handling of the burial service. Almost all of the cemeteries had such a bell.

See Photo #7

This tombstone, one of the oldest found in Colma, marked the gravesite of H.J. Hartnagle, who died in 1875. The tombstone was originally located at Odd Fellows Cemetery in San Francisco. It was discovered in 2001 near Holy Cross Cemetery along the old Southern Pacific right-of-way during tunnel excavation associated with the San Francisco Airport BART extension. In the 1930’s, when courts decreed that all bodies in existing San Francisco cemeteries be removed, Hartnagle’s remains were transferred to a mass gravesite at Odd Fellows (Greenlawn) Cemetery in Colma. During the transfer, the tombstone was somehow separated from the body. It may have accidentally fallen from a railroad car or may have been discarded as many tombstones were when San Francisco’s cemeteries were evicted. Individual tombstones are prohibited at the mass gravesite.

It may never be known how the tombstone was separated from Hartnagel.

On display in museum.
When an undertaker had to travel from one town to another, he took with him all the tools of the trade. One of which was a table to lay the corpse on to prepare for embalming, autopsy, or for preparation for viewing.

See Photo #11

The essential features of a blacksmith shop include forge, bellows, anvil, quenching tub, metal-forming tools and a workbench with a vise. Tools that a blacksmith would have required are hammers to shape the metal without heat; chisels and cleavers for cutting; punches and hand drills to make different types of holes; soldering irons to unite two pieces of metal without heating the whole metal; and files to smooth the edges. Different types of simple tongs would be used to hold the hot metal as kit was worked. The blacksmith was frequently the local jack-of-all-trades working with metal fittings and equipment pertaining to trains, farming, gun making, and in later years, automobiles. Blacksmiths could also be skilled in woodworking and were frequently the wagon makers in their community. Here in Colma each monument company had its own blacksmith shop. The making of chisels and keeping them sharp was a never-ending job related to carving the lettering on monument.