Pioneer Cemetery

Close by to where I now work is Cincinnati's oldest cemetery.  Known variously as Columbia Church Baptist, Columbia Pioneer, and Pioneer Memorial, it is the final resting place for 180 people, including Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War veterans.  Maintained (poorly I might add) by the Cincinnati Parks Department, the cemetery is located across from Lunken Airport.  It has honeysuckle invading the fence lines, garlic mustard in patches, stones that need to be reset, other stones that need to be cleaned, and a regular and effective mowing schedule.  I have reached out to the parks three times now to suggest a friends group be formed, but no reply from our beloved city employees.

There are also newer veteran stones at the cemetery, placed in a plot near the walkway leading to the steps.  This was a project done by a local young man, who also was able to designate two parking places for wounded veterans.  Alas, two of the stones have incorrect information, and they are just placed on the ground, and there is a larger memorial stone with information about the groups involved in getting these newer stones placed.  After three attempts to reach out to them about the plan for these stones and this plot, and the fact that two of them are incorrect, I finally received a very non-committal reply about how they did the research (poorly as the men with incorrect stones are listed correctly on their older veterans stones, and a check of the rosters verifies this, as well as their graves registration cards), and nothing about the plan for the stones.  Terrible.

There will be more posts on this cemetery as I work on trying to get more awareness going and try to create some sort of support organization.