Superintendent Dr. Steven L. Walts and Assistant Superintendent David Cline addressed the issue of exhuming graves at the 12th high school site, during Superintendent’s Time at the Nov. 19 School Board meeting, but the Lynn family is still unhappy with the way the school division handled the situation.
Assistant Superintendent of Planning and Finance David Cline said that at this late stage it would have cost millions of dollars to move the site of football field at the 12th high school, which is why they decided instead to move the graves they found, exhuming the bodies.
At the same time Superintendent Walts sympathized with concerns from citizens and ancestors.
“I understand this is a very sensitive issue,” Walts told citizens. “We are very cognizant of this. We do believe we followed a process, and are going to treat everything we find with honor and respect.”
However Walts also said it was important to provide the “urgently needed school” on schedule for opening in the fall of 2016.
Cline explained the time line of how the school site was evaluated. According to Cline, in the summer of 2008, during the wetland studies phase of the project, the county’s archeological team failed to discover any graves on the site. Cline believes this is because the graves were obscured underneath a thick growth of vegetation, and because they appeared to just be rocks and boulders.
Cline reported that small stone and boulder headstones were not discovered until July of 2013, once “construction plans were nearly complete.”
Even at this time of this discover, surveyors were not certain the rocks were grave markers. Cline said they initially did not appear to be headstones since they were not marked with names or dates, and also because they were not situated in a clearing, but in the middle of the overgrown woods with thin threes several inches apart from each other.
“Basically, It is unrecognizable as a grave site or a cemetery,” said Cline. “Nobody had step foot there in 20, probably 50-years.”
At that point, Cline said he worked with county archeologist Justin Patton and genealogist William Olson from the Prince William County Historical Commission.
However, Olson said his meeting with Prince William officials was a short one.
“This was not a sit-down meeting, this was a stand-up meeting. In fact, I didn’t even get the calling cards of the participants,” Olson told Uriah Kaiser of Potomac Local.
Once the school division discovered there were indeed human remains buried beneath the grave markers, Cline said they followed the necessary procedures, including publishing an announcement of the discovery of the graves in the Washington Post for one day as per state requirements. Additionally, they posted notice at the Kelly Center for 60 days, twice the required time.
While PWCS leadership has been criticized for not publishing in Prince William media outlets, Cline said they choose the publication with a “wide circulation in the local area.”
He further noted that InsideNova posted an article about the grave on Aug. 23, 2013, bringing further exposure to the “Grave Issue.” Despite such media attention, Cline said Prince William County Schools was not contacted by anyone requesting a public meeting on the issue. The only response he received was from a local pastor and a genealogist, who did not shed light on whom the graves belong to.
PWCS was issued a permit for the Department of Historical Resources to exhume and move the bodies and other grave artifacts to Stonewall Memorial Gardens in Manassas. But first they are currently working with Towson University in Maryland to try to identify the few skeletal remains they found, whose identifies or family origins have not yet been officially determined.
Tuesday morning, the Lynn family, whose ancestors have lived in Prince William County since before the American Revolution, began to speak publicly telling media outlets that they believes graves belong to their family members. The information came to Dick Lynn via Don Wilson at RELIC, who researched the property and contacted the Dick Saturday.
Family member Carolyn Lynn said on his genealogy Blogspot that it is “ironic” because he was concerned about the discovery of the graves before he even knew the connection to his family. He said happy to possible have found the grave site of his third and possibly second generation great-grandparents, John Henry Lynn, a Civil War veteran from Virginia, but she is not at all happy with the way PWCS has handled the situation.
Prince William resident Dick Lynn is also unhappy about the moving of the burial sites.
“They are moving a grave site that is sacred ground to build a football stadium. It’s not right,” Lynn said.
While Cline said the Lynn family will be included in future decisions, should they be found to be living relations, Lynn said that as of Wednesday he had not yet received a phone call or any other form of correspondence from anyone at PWCS or the county on the matter.
While Lynn knows it is too late to return the remains to their plots , he said he would prefer they be reburied near the site, rather than a the Stonewall Memorial Cemetary where Cline said they plan to hold a second burial.
Additionally, Lynn said he finds it odd that no one was able to figure out that the Lynn’s owned the property since they first leased the property in 1740, then bought it and owned it until 1910 when they had to sell it. Lynn also said his family is not difficult to find as many of his relatives still live in Prince William County. He also said they are well known in Prince William County as one of his relatives served on the Board of County Supervisors, and Fred Lynn Middle School was even named for his uncle Fred Marshall Lynn.
For the school system to prioritize a football field and a swimming pool, “that’s pretty low,” said Lynn.
Cline, however, explained that the situation was unique, involving massive expenses, a strict timeline and restrictions on land use due to surrounding wetlands and a large resource protection area (RPA.) He said the school division considered reconfiguring the school construction site plans, but did not find a workable alternative.
Cline further emphasized that exhuming bodies found at a construction site is not PWCS’s typical response to finding graves. At other schools, such as Hylton High School, Potomac High School, Gram Park Middle School and Dumfries Elementary School, they have instead moved buildings and fields in order to leave cemetery plots undisturbed.
However, in this case, he said to do so, was “not feasible with our timeline.” The financial costs were also a deciding factor in their decision. To cease excavation would cost an estimate of $6-10 million dollars since the school would need to pay extra for compression of the construction schedule.
Should they instead delay construction and opening of the school, Cline said that would cost an additional $3-5 million due to inflation. Moreover, should they ask construction companies to rebid on the project, they could face a legal challenge.
At the Board of County Supervisor meeting, Supervisor Marti Nohe of the Coles District asked his board to reconsider the process necessary for exhuming human remains within the county. He said he received several phone calls from concerned citizens, who were unhappy about the school division’s handling of the matter.
Dr. Michael Otaigbe, School Board member from the Coles District asked that going forward the Lynn family be included, “every step of the way.”
Updated with a correction from yesterday. It was not Dick Lynn's genealogy blog, but Carolyn Lynn's.
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