Court to address cemetery issue
WAYNESBURG – The old Rhodes Family cemetery off Miller Lane in Franklin Township now resembles an ancient burial mound.
The 19th century cemetery, which contains eight to 12 bodies – the most recent buried in 1862 – is now a large mound of earth rising more than 20 feet high in an area that was leveled for the construction of a new motel behind the existing Econo Lodge.
The earth around the cemetery was excavated to develop the site, leaving behind a mound about 65 by 61 feet in size.
Plans for the motel by Nikita Lodging Inc., which owns the Econo Lodge and is building the new motel, call for preserving the cemetery by building a retaining wall around it and steps leading to the graves.
However, work on the new motel was halted in the fall, and now Greene County President Judge Farley Toothman has scheduled a hearing on a proposed motion that would require Franklin Township to restore and maintain the cemetery. A viewing of the property by various government officials and the property’s owner will be held Thursday morning.
Toothman, acting on his own volition, issued an order last week scheduling the hearing July 12 on his motion to require the township to declare the cemetery a public nuisance and assume the care for its management and restoration under the court’s supervision.
He cites a state law regarding burial grounds, which states that should a burial ground become a nuisance, the court “may direct” that it be placed in the care of the supervisors of the townships at which the burial grounds are situated.
The township issued a permit for construction of the 72-unit motel in 2013, township code enforcement officer Steve Coss said. The preservation of the cemetery was addressed in the approved project plans. Detailing engineering drawings show the construction of a 65-by-61-foot retaining wall around the mound of earth and steps to reach the graves.
The township issued an order on Sept. 16, ordering Nikita to halt construction of the motel until it be addressed the cemetery, Coss said.
“Nothing had been done on it,” he said.
Franklin Township Supervisor Reed Kiger said the condition the cemetery has been left in is a shame.
“It’s sad, for any of the ancestors of the family,” Kiger said. “They would have to have a ladder to get up there.”
However, Kiger said the township does not believe it should be responsible for it. Responsibility, he said, lies with the property owner, Nikita Lodging.
Township solicitor Kim Pratt agreed the township should not be held responsible for care of the cemetery. She further questioned whether it was appropriate for the court to have initiated the proceeding. Normally, such a proceeding starts with a petitioner considered a party to the action.
Neither Kiger nor Coss knew if there were any ancestors of those buried in the cemetery still living in the area.
K.R. Patel, general manager of Nikita, said work on the motel had started in June and was halted when the township issued the order.
“Right now, we just put a hold on the project,” he said. The company “eventually” plans to continue the project, finishing the motel as well as constructing the cemetery retaining wall, he said.
“If we didn’t finish it up (the retaining wall) it’s going to look like a mess,” he said. Patel also said he didn’t understand why all of a sudden there was a “rush” to get the project done.
Nikita could have taken steps to move the cemetery, Patel said, but instead it decide to preserve it.
Among documents filed with the court case are motions presented in 1978 by the then owners of the property, Wilbert and Sophie Shlepr, asking the court to vacate the property for burial purposes and to allow the bodies to be re-inter in Green Mount Cemetery. The Shleprs had plans to develop the property for a motel, restaurant and housing.
One of the motion states no one had been buried in the cemetery since 1862. A petition signed by 51 residents as part of the proceeding, stated “the burial grounds has ceased to be used for interments and interferes with and hinders the improvements, extensions and general progressive interests of Waynesburg, Franklin Township and Greene County.”
Motions to vacate the cemetery were dismissed at the time by then-judge Glenn Toothman, the late father of Judge Farley Toothman.