(CNN) -
A Michigan woman used the surface of an overturned headstone to make candy.
How did the headstone get into the house in Okemos, Michigan, outside of Lansing?
That's a mystery, according to the president of the Friends of Lansing's Historic Cemeteries (FOLHC) group, Loretta S. Stanaway.
The memorial was discovered in August on a property auction site after the family matriarch was placed in an Alzheimer's care facility, Stanaway said.
A former Lansing citizen acknowledged that it was probably from a city cemetery and contacted the FOLHC, and they began to investigate.
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"The family hired an auctioneer to take care of the items," Stanaway told CNN.
"As he was going through things, he saw this marble slab in the kitchen, turned it over, and discovered that it was a headstone. The family told him they used it to make fudge. The family couldn't say how or when the headstone arrived. ".
Stanaway said the family told him the headstone was used as a hard surface to make seasonal candy, as it was made of marble.
This is how the plot looked before the restoration.
The process of finding the tombstone's legitimate home was long, Stanaway said.
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"We tried to find relatives to see what we could figure out what the story was from a relative point of view or who could give us permission to return the monument to its place, but we couldn't find any survivors," Stanaway said.
Peter J. Weller died in 1849 in Lansing, Michigan, and was buried in Oak Park Cemetery, according to Stanaway.
In 1875, his grave was moved to Mount Hope Cemetery, but the monument never arrived.
The tombstone was missing for 146 years, before it was returned.
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The auctioneer donated the monument to FOLHC and they went to work to restore their parcel.
They discovered that Weller had two daughters and a daughter-in-law in the same cemetery.
His daughter-in-law's stone had been restored in 2014, so they decided to restore that of their daughters as well.
FOLHC hired a conservationist and he returned the monuments to their former glory.
Weller now resides with his daughters 172 years after his death.
The FOLHC plans to hold a memorial service to recognize Weller's return to the cemetery this Sunday.