STEUBENVILLE — A month after construction of a senior housing project was halted because grave markers were found during site preparation, archaeological consultants have been at the long-forgotten cemetery at the top of Washington Street hill to lay the groundwork for their investigation.

City officials confirmed an ASC Group Inc. consultant has been in Steubenville for the initial testing.

“It is my understanding that ASC Group, the archaeological firm, was (here) to investigate the site,” City Manager Mike Johnson said. “They will need to remove approximately five inches of the gravel so that ground-penetrating radar can be used. Additionally, after ground-penetrating radar, the archaeological firm will begin investigating any anomalies.”

Woda-Cooper Companies is building a 50-unit senior housing complex at the site, situated between Washington Street (Sunset Boulevard) and McDowell Avenue on the hillside behind The Laundromat. Dirt-moving was stopped after crews uncovered a handful of grave markers, but not before at least 146 truckloads of soil, “more or less,” were hauled away.

Under state law, the board of township trustees or the trustees or directors of a cemetery association must “provide for the removal of all remains buried in that cemetery, for the removal of all stones and monuments marking the graves of that cemetery, for the reinterment of the remains and for the re-erection of those stones and monuments in suitable public ground in the near vicinity, all of which shall be paid for from the township treasury.”

The land itself is not supposed to change hands “until after the remains buried in that cemetery, together with stones and monuments, have been removed” in accordance with the law.

The abandoned cemetery — newspapers of the era routinely referred to it as “Jacksonville Cemetery” or “the Catholic Cemetery” — also housed remains that had been moved from the old St. Pius cemetery downtown to the hilltop cemetery after it closed in the mid-1840s.

Remains were supposed to have been moved from Jacksonville/the Catholic Cemetery to Mt. Calvary Cemetery after it opened in 1883, but local sources researching names found on the five markers last month have said they haven’t been able to find any trace of them in local records and fear there may be others. Since burials in the old cemetery predate formation of the Steubenville Diocese, the Diocese of Cincinnati and the Diocese of Columbus were asked to search their records for information.

Johnson said he’s glad the process appears to have started, “(but) I anticipate a long process.”

Flora Verstraten-Merrin, president of the Jefferson County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society, said with information so difficult to come by it’s crucial that the information on the stones and their location be documented.

Verstraten-Merrin and Linda Hilty, vice president of the Jefferson County Historical Society, have been combing through old newspapers looking for deaths. So far they’ve found at least 40 death mentions and are still looking. When they’ve exhausted their sources, she said they’ll be comparing the list they compiled to burial cards at Mt. Calvary and Union cemeteries to see if any of them were, in fact, moved.

“(With) many burials, the only record of them living and dying is a tombstone or a reinterment record,” she said. “With children and small babies, they often weren’t even recorded…in any kind of records, except on their tombstone or an interment record. That makes them invaluable to family history researchers.”

She also points out that Ohio didn’t record births or deaths before 1867 and even then, “not everyone got recorded in vital records. So, tombstones are a primary source — a No. 1 source — for someone living and dying.”

“Everyone deserves a respectable burial or internment, records to prove it and a tombstone,” she said. “If it was their ancestor, they would feel exactly the same way.”