What remains to be seen about the prospects for a hangar expansion at Lancaster Airport depends on whether there are remains to be seen.

Human remains, that is.

A headstone belonging to Johannes Meister, who settled on land now owned by the airport shortly before the American Revolution, was discovered several years ago on the property, near where new hangars are planned.

The marker for Meister, who died in 1815, is accompanied by other headstones buried nearby, and expansion plans can’t proceed until the airport figures out what to do with the stones and potential remains.

Grave Concern, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving Lancaster County’s historical cemeteries, is “95% certain” human remains are near the headstones, according to member Steve Stuart. 

If remains are there, Pennsylvania’s 1994 Historic Burial Places Preservation Act comes into play.

“That’s the threshold question here: Is this a historic burial site or not?” Sam Mecum, attorney for Grave Concern, said during a hearing in county court Tuesday.

The act protects burial grounds that are at least a century old and in which no burials have taken place for at least 50 years. However, gravemarkers and memorials in such places can be moved with court approval.

To find out whether there are remains will take some digging.

A previous effort to determine if human remains were on site proved inconclusive because stones obstructed ground-penetrating radar.

At Tuesday’s hearing, attorneys representing Grave Concern, Meister descendants and Lancaster Airport Authority agreed to go forward with an exploratory dig using an excavating consultant.

That’s “the big unknown,” Judge Jeffrey Reich said. “Are there actual human remains anywhere near there?”

A dig date was not scheduled and could take some time to work out logistically, though Aaron Zeamer, the airport authority’s solicitor, talked of having it done before the ground gets too cold.

Whenever it does happen, a Grave Concern representative can be present, Reich said.

Regardless of whether remains are found, the headstones likely would be moved to Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lititz or Jerusalem Evangelical Lutheran Church in Warwick Township, according to Zeamer.

You can read more in an article by Dan Nephin published in the lancasteronline web site at: https://tinyurl.com/2pcnbv23.