Cemeteries

The Washington Township Board of Trustees oversees the maintenance of six cemeteries in the Township. These include the Centerville-Washington Township Cemetery (also called the "Centerville Cemetery"), which can be entered from an extension of East Ridgeway Avenue; The Sugar Creek Baptist Church Cemetery (also called the "Old Centerville Cemetery") with an entrance off North Main Street north of Giovanni's Restaurant; Woodbourne Cemetery on West Whipp Road on the northwest corner of Paddington Road; Washington Presbyterian Church Cemetery on Route 725 at Southwind Drive; Rehoboth Methodist Church Cemetery, on the west side of State Route 48 near the Warren County line; and the Sugar Creek Friends Meeting House Cemetery on the west side of Clyo at Olde Quaker Court.

The first recorded meeting of the Sugar Creek Baptists (now Centerville Baptist Church) was November 2, 1799. In 1802, property was purchased from Aaron Nutt and by 1803 a meeting house was erected on the west side of the cemetery. Early residents traveled to the church on trails which were blazed through the wilderness from settlements five miles away. On July 4, 1807, the church trustees appointed Benjamin Robbins and Whitely Hatfield "to lay off a burial ground in proper manner." Additions to the cemetery continued until 1868, which extended the cemetery to its present boundaries. Many early settlers, including veterans of the Revolutionary and other wars, are interred there.

In 1823 Richard Wheatley elected to bury his son Richard in lot 16 of the industrial town of Woodbourne, thereby establishing a town burial ground. Others were buried there before the Christian Church was built on lot 11 in 1846. This Church then associated itself with the cemetery. With the decline of the town the church was abandoned and eventually torn down in 1939. The last interment in the cemetery was in 1891. There are nine markers for 15 known burials, but many more are believed to be buried there.

Encouraged by Edmund and Johnathan Munger, the church congregation met for the first time on November 29, 1813. Services were held in the larger of Munger's two barns until a quaint brick church was built in 1830 on two acres purchased by Johnathan Munger for $35. The church sat between the cemetery and Miamisburg-Centerville Road at the corner of what is now Southwind Drive (formerly Washington Church Road). The church was abandoned in 1928 and razed by the State of Ohio in 1971. There are 89 graves including that of Revolutionary War General William Dodds. The earliest grave is dated 1830 and the last 1898.

The members of this church first met in 1809 in the home of Henry Opdyke on the Alexandersville-Bellbrook Pike near the Greene County line. In 1816, the members built a small brick church in front of the cemetery that faced State Route 48. The church was abandoned and torn down many years ago when the congregation joined with the United Methodist Church of Centerville. The cemetery contains 51 known graves dated between 1821 and 1879.

After attending monthly meetings in Waynesville and Springboro for many years, members of the Society of Friends built a log meeting facing Clyo Road on two acres of land purchased from Soloman Miller in 1823. Abandoned as a church in 1858 when most of the members moved out of the Township, the structure was converted to a house only to be consumed by fire soon after. The cemetery contains nine markers for eleven members of three families, but Quaker records show more than that. The cemetery was deeded to the Township in 1979.