SCHENECTADY — The mystery of the Hamilton Hill gravestone has been solved, thanks to a descendent who tracked down Gertrude Bancker Frank’s new burial site.

An Amsterdam resident was able to confirm that Gertrude was reburied with dignity at Vale Cemetery, not abandoned in a backyard when developers bought old cemetery land to build the Hamilton Hill neighborhood.

Her first gravestone was left behind and used to build a patio on Emmett Street, far from her original burial site. Resident Terry Taylor was shaken when she removed the patio two weeks ago and discovered that it had been made out of the gravestone foundations used at the city’s earliest poorhouse cemetery. Then she flipped over the most deeply-buried stone and discovered an actual grave marker.

Her first fear was that Gertrude’s body was in her backyard, too. But a distant relation, Donald Keefer of Amsterdam, discovered Gertrude’s new whereabouts.

“I’m a Bancker descendent, so I was interested,” he said. “I went to the Bancker monument at Vale and there she was.”

He added that he believes Gertrude’s first gravestone was “discarded” when her remains were reinterred at Vale. The stone will now be displayed near the Bancker monument.