Her name and date of death, virtually the only reminders of her brief life, disappeared when her tombstone was stolen, perhaps a half-century ago, from atop her grave at the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery, said Jeremy Nichols, a local cemetery expert.

On Tuesday, little Nettie will get her engraved marble marker back.

Nichols, a member of the Sonoma County Historical Society, and Bill Montgomery, the Rural Cemetery coordinator, will unveil the recently recovered grave marker at a City Council meeting where they will present a "Tombstone Amnesty" program.

It's basically a "no questions asked" invitation to those in possession of stolen, misplaced or missing tombstones to part with them without fear of legal retribution, Nichols said.

"Some people think something like that looks good in their back yard and some, a large percentage, are simply taken by kids fooling around, who might have been drunk and can't remember where they got them," Nichols said.

"I don't care how they got them," he said. "Just send me an e-mail at www.tombstoneamnesty.org and I will make arrangements to get the tombstone back."

Nettie's tombstone, a 40-pound, 1-foot-wide by 2-foot-high marker, will be the first, Nichols said.

From its relatively well-preserved appearance, Nichols guessed it was stolen at least 50 years ago.

"It's obviously been out of the weather for some time. For something 129 years old it is in remarkably good condition because marble is a soft stone that doesn't weather well," Nichols said.

There is a chance, albeit unlikely, that the amnesty program could turn into a big job.

Montgomery said 5,500 people are buried within the cemetery's 17 acres, many in unmarked graves.

About 2,700 graves had some kind of marker, from wooden stakes that have rotted away to stones, many of which remain.

Many of the stones have been subjected to vandalism or stolen, "often in conjunction with late-night beer parties" in the cemetery, Montgomery said.

Nichols hopes to get some of them back through the amnesty program, an effort he said is about more than just doing the right thing.

"We need to care for people even after they are dead. They are our history," he said.

That includes Nettie Combs, whose headstone, missing for decades, mysteriously appeared on the doorstep of a Napa stonecutter.

"Obviously, someone decided to get rid of it," Nichols said. "Maybe they didn't want to walk up to a policeman and say 'I stole this,' but at least they were nice enough not to dump it in a ditch or river where it would be lost forever."

That was a decade ago.

Nichols said the stonecutter, after a prolonged search, gave up his effort to find which cemetery the headstone came from.

Then he read about Nichols' effort to return three wooden grave markers found in a barn along the Russian River to the Calistoga Pioneer Cemetery from which they had been taken decades earlier.

Once Nichols got the stone, he tracked it to the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery, where Nettie had been laid to rest in her family's plot, the daughter of J.W. and Maria Combs.

Her grave is alongside that of her 5-year-old brother, Chester, who died just nine days after Nettie from scarlet fever.

"His tombstone is still there," Nichols said, although it's not in the same well-preserved condition as his sister's.

"Chester's is covered with lichen and is hard to read now," Nichols said.

Nichols said efforts to track down descendants of the Combs family have so far been unsuccessful.

But he's happy to at least return Nettie's marker to her final resting place.

"Everyone who was anybody, important or not, is in one of our cemeteries and you just don't forget bout them because they are dead," he said. "We need to remember that."

NO QUESTIONS ASKED

What: The Santa Rosa Rural Cemetary "Tombstone Amnesty" program is a no-questions-asked invitation to those in possession of stolen, misplaced or missing tombstones to return them without fear of legal retribution.

Quote: "I don't care how they got them," said program coordinator Jeremy Nichols. "Just send me an e-mail at www.tombstoneamnesty.org and I will make arrangements to get the tombstone back."

You can reach Staff Writer Mike McCoy at 521-5276