Excerpt from Eighth Annual Report of the State Board of Health of New York: Transmitted to the Legislature February 27, 1888

The question of the safety of building a' school-house on the site of what was formerly used as a cemetery at Port Jervis came again under the consideration of the Board during the past year. It had in 1884 been investigated by Dr. Alfred L. Carroll, then Secretarv of this Board, and' reported upon adversely, on the ground that the cemetery contained too many interred bodies: Since that time, how ever, measures have been taken to render the location acceptable by exhuming the bodies, and resorting to other expedients to improve its sanitary condition, and this Board was again asked for its judgment in the matter. The report of the expert sent sets forth at length the efforts made to render the site sanitarily safe, the methods of exhumation adopted, and the condition of the bodies exhumed. He arrived at the conclusion that from the sandy nature of the soil a period of nine years in common co¿ins. Sufficed for the complete destruction of all parts of the body except the bones, while the great majority of the bodies had been buried upwards of eighteen years. The work of exhuming had been thorough, every particle that could be distinguished from the soil. Even to the dust and mould on the bottom of coffins. Was scrupulously taken away and the excavated soil treated with a ton of cop peras, which the following Spring rains washed into the porous subsoil. All kinds of vegetation were allowed to grow upon the lot thereafter.

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