The Pioneer Memorial Cemetery (also known as Columbia Baptist Church Cemetery) is a historic

pioneer cemetery In the United States, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, a pioneer cemetery is a cemetery that is the burial place for pioneers. American pioneers founded such cemeteries during territorial expansion of the United States, with founding dates span ...

in the

Columbia-Tusculum Columbia-Tusculum is the oldest neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is located on the East Side of the city. The population was 1,523 at the 2020 census. Demographics Source - City of Cincinnati Statistical Database. Note - boundaries of neig ...

neighborhood of

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, United States. It is located on a small hill overlooking

Lunken Airport Cincinnati Municipal Airport – Lunken Field (Cincinnati Municipal Lunken Airport) is a public airport in Cincinnati, Ohio, three miles (5 km) east of Downtown Cincinnati. It is owned by the city of Cincinnati and serves private aircr ...

at 333 Wilmer Avenue on Cincinnati's east side. The oldest cemetery in Hamilton County, it lies at the site of Columbia Baptist Church, founded in 1790. Columbia is the oldest settlement in Hamilton County, as it was founded in 1788, one month before Losantiville (later Cincinnati). The cemetery is the only extant remnant of the Columbia settlement. Included in this cemetery is the grave of Major Benjamin Stites, 1734–1804, founding father of Columbia. The fellow founder of Columbia and pioneer, soldier, and legislator Ephraim Kibbey (1756–1809) is memorialized here on the monument "To the First Boat-load" erected in 1879. Frederick L. Payne, then Supervising Horticulturalist for the Park Board, began a restoration project in 1967 for the cemetery. The cemetery is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

under its historic name of "Columbia Baptist Cemetery". Since 1958, the Pioneer Cemetery has been known as an

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...

— in that year, evidence was discovered that the

terrace Terrace may refer to: Landforms and construction * Fluvial terrace, a natural, flat surface that borders and lies above the floodplain of a stream or river * Terrace, a street suffix * Terrace, the portion of a lot between the public sidewalk a ...

upon which the cemetery lies was once a Native American village site. Due to the presence of the cemetery, no excavation has ever been conducted there; consequently, all that is known about the village is that it was inhabited during the

Woodland period In the classification of :category:Archaeological cultures of North America, archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 Common Era, BCE to European con ...

.Columbia-Tusculum Historical Society–Miami Purchase Association. '.

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propertie ...

, 1978-10-27. Accessed 2011-02-25. The Cincinnati Parks Department maintains the property.

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* * * * {{Columbia-Tusculum MRA 1958 archaeological discoveries Archaeological sites in Ohio Woodland period Cemeteries in Cincinnati National Register of Historic Places in Cincinnati Cemeteries established in the 1790s Baptist cemeteries in the United States 1790 establishments in the United States