Poor Jacob and Catherine Ritter.

The Penn Township couple lost nine young children during an 18-year span between 1834 and 1852, none of them older than age 2. But life went on. The tiny bodies were interred in a graveyard on the farm.

Problem is, no one's sure exactly where their final resting place was.

Throughout Lancaster County there are an uncountable number of family graveyards that have been lost to the ages. Farmers would occasionally relocate headstones and other artifacts to till plots once used as cemeteries.

And so the Ritter family might have been forgotten. But modernity intruded.

In June, construction crews working in the Sweetbriar development, off Bucknoll Road just southeast of Manheim, struck stone. Gravestones, to be exact: 21 headstones bearing the names, birth and death dates of the Ritter children and other members of the Ritter and Longenecker families.

Work stopped immediately; over the next two months the developer, Keystone Custom Homes, would consult geologists, archaeologists and lawyers, trying "to do the right thing," said Keystone attorney Marc Kaplin.

Now, a Lancaster County judge will have the final word on just what that is.

At a hearing Thursday before Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas Judge David Ashworth, Kaplin said Keystone Custom Homes believes the headstones — found stacked and piled upon one another — and a handful of what might be human remains were probably moved from another site, perhaps an old graveyard on the opposite side of Bucknoll Road. Keystone would like to move them again — to Mellinger Mennonite Cemetery, on Greenfield Road just west of Lancaster.

But an organization called Grave Concern, which seeks to preserve, restore and maintain the county's historic graveyards, wants the artifacts to remain right where they were found.

"The idea is that this is a family that was interred together, and they should be allowed to rest in peace," said May Gaynor, of Strasburg, one of more than a dozen Grave Concern supporters who attended the hearing.

Ashworth said he hoped the developer and preservationists could come up with some sort of compromise. "Frankly, there's precious little law that controls this," he said. "I'm concerned we treat this entire site with respect."

But if no compromise is possible, Ashworth said, his decision may hinge on whether the site was the actual burial plot for the Ritter children and the others — or just the place where their headstones and some remains were dumped so their original gravesite could be farmed.

Best effort
Everyone involved in the matter acknowledges that Keystone Custom Homes has done the right thing — so far, at least.

Sam Mecum, the attorney representing Grave Concern (and a Grave Concern board member), said there are many unrecorded cemeteries around the county, and the law is such that a developer or anyone else stumbling upon a gravesite "could just cover it back up and not say a word." That, he said, "may have occurred in Lancaster County over the years."

But while state law is vague on the broad question of how to treat old graveyards, it does stipulate that if a property owner wants to move artifacts, he or she must petition the court for permission, Mecum said.

The site where the gravestones, some splintered wood, nails and a few fragments of what may be bone — including a cranium — were found measures about 12 by 16 feet, and is in a portion of the 84-acre Sweetbriar development where Keystone Custom Homes is constructing a soccer field that, once complete, will be given to Penn Township.

The field cannot be finished until the issue of the gravestones/gravesite is resolved, Kaplin said.

The land was previously owned by Noah W. Kreider & Sons, which bought it in 1976 and sold it to Keystone subsidiary Fox Clearing LLC in 2004, said Robert K. Weaver, an attorney who serves as Keystone's in-house counsel. Kreider & Sons, he said, "would have been obligated under applicable law to disclose any hidden defect on the property of which they were aware, but which was not obvious to an observer, and no disclosure was made."

So it surprised everyone when the subcontractor grading the site with a bulldozer unearthed the gravestones.

"They stopped, and [Keystone] called me and said, 'What do we do?' " Kaplin told Ashworth.

What followed was weeks of sleuthing that didn't turn up a whole lot.

Keystone attorneys dug into archives, poring through old atlases and property records. Weaver said an 1869 atlas listed Jacob Ritter as owner of the farm; an 1875 atlas cited a Peter Longenecker. "We have a record that these people did own the farm," he said — but there was no record of a graveyard on it.

Via old deeds, Weaver said Keystone was able to determine that some of Peter Longenecker's heirs bore the surname Minnich. Keystone then contracted with a direct mail firm, sending notices to everyone with the last name of Ritter, Longenecker and Minnich, along with alternate spellings, in all ZIP codes beginning with 176, along with the 17545 — Manheim — ZIP code.

"We asked them to contact me" if they were descendants of the original owners, Weaver said. "I received nothing from anyone saying, 'Yes, I'm related,' " or 'Yes, I'm interested.' "

Members of Grave Concern said they believed they had located one possible relative, and in the past few days had begun working with him to see if his genealogy could be traced back to those listed on the gravestones.

Meanwhile, Keystone hired the ARM Group, of Hershey, to conduct a geological study of the site. Using ground-penetrating radar, Kaplin said, ARM determined that there were multiple stones on the site, some piled on top or leaning against one another. An archaeological firm, K2 Consulting Services LLC, was then brought in to do a "controlled dig." The headstones, weather-beaten and in some cases broken, were excavated and are now being held in a Keystone facility in Manheim Township. Small fragments of wood, large nails and possible bone fragments are still on-site, Kaplin said.

The fragments have not been tested to determine if they are indeed bone, said Keystone vice president of land Greg Hill. But even if they are, there are only about four of them, and "they could fit inside a sandwich bag," he said.

The archaeologists also noted that there was an old, overgrown cemetery on the opposite side of Bucknoll Road. A large PPL substation had been constructed in the 1970s; archaeologists wondered if the artifacts found on the Sweetbriar site had been dug up and relocated at that time. But K2's report noted that archaeologists spoke with the landowner, whose husband had lived on the site for 60 years; "as far as she knew the cemetery had not been disturbed by the construction activities."

Still, K2 president Marsha Kodlick said at the hearing that she believed the headstones did not indicate individual burial plots and had been moved to the Sweetbriar site from some other location. "It was not unusual for families to have cemeteries on their farms, and over the years, it was not unusual for [headstones and other artifacts] to be moved so the agricultural land could be farmed," she said.

But Mecum noted that it seemed odd that wood, possibly from coffins, and bone fragments would have been moved with the headstones. "Would they dig down 2, 3, 6 feet?" he said.

"It is more likely than not that this site — with nails, wood fragments and potential human remains — was a burial place," Mecum asserted. "The fact that the cemetery doesn't show up on [the old] atlas doesn't mean there's not a cemetery there."

At one point Judge Ashworth asked Mecum: "If it's determined that this was a relocation of graves perhaps improperly done in the past, is it your contention that this constitutes a cemetery?"

"Yes," responded Mecum. "Human remains are on that site."

Mecum, a partner with the Lancaster law firm of Reese, Pugh, Samley, Wagenseller & Mecum, and a previous Grave Concern vice president, said he'd heard about the hearing in mid-July, after May Gaynor had seen it announced in the classified legal notices of the Lancaster newspapers.

In late July, Grave Concern sent out a postcard asking supporters to attend the hearing, noting that "It is Grave Concern's position that the burial site should be preserved where it is and the uncovered tombstones be placed on the site in some fashion." Thursday, Mecum told Ashworth the organization envisioned a fenced-off site, perhaps marked with a bronze plaque "so people know this is the final resting place of people who came before us, long ago."

Grave Concern opposes Keystone's plan to move the stones and remains to Mellinger Mennonite Cemetery, some 12 miles away, but might be open to a compromise if a location within the Sweetbriar site, preferably near the soccer field, could be found, Mecum said.

Ashworth also expressed interest in such a compromise, noting that "right now I have two options" — keeping the artifacts on site, or permitting Keystone to move them — but "I have not heard what would be involved in fencing off an area somewhere else on the property."

Keystone, however, noted that its options might be limited. To keep the artifacts where they were found would mean the soccer field couldn't be completed; "It would push the field into an area that could not be graded," said Keystone's Hill. And most of the rest of the site is spoken for — slated for homes or streets.

Still, Penn Township Manager Dave Kratzer, who attended the hearing, conferred with Hill during the proceedings. Asked by Ashworth if it was possible to investigate alternatives, Kratzer said, "Mr. Hill and I have already begun that process."

Ashworth said he hopes to have enough information to make a decision within a few weeks.