By RUTH ENGEILEN

                                                                                                  Enquirer Magazine Photos By ALLAN KAIN

A seldom-visited, often-forgotten Cemetery was  threatened recently by the rerouting of Columbia Parkway in its are from Delta Ave. to Beechmont Levee. Plans approved by City Council call for the parking lot of Pioneer Cemetery opposite Lunken Airport to be abolished but the graves of Cincinnati’s pioneer will rest in peace - though in the shadows of the path of progress.

            For l75 years, Cincinnati's founding fathers have slept in peace in a sequestered spot in East End between the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks and Lunken Airport. Pioneer's Cemetery, as It is commonly known, had practically Passed into oblivion until 1961. T hen vandals invaded the burying ground and toppled many of the tombstones. I'am the subsequent restoration, the plot was landscaped, trimmed and prominently marked. A swamp that once edged the burying ground was drained and made into a parking lot. Now a proposed relocation of  Columbia Parkway calls for eliminating the parking lot.

According to the proposal, one side of the Parkway would bridge over the present entrance to the cemetery. The plan has been approved by the City Council and awaits action by the State Highway Department and the Federal Bureau of Public Roads. The graveyard  originally was known as the Columbia Baptist Cemetery Grounds because it surrounded the Columbia Baptist Church, the first Protestant church In the Northeast Territory.

The land was donated by Major Benjamin Stites who in 1788 founded Columbia, now part of Cincinnati. Stites envisioned a village covering the 640-acre "Turkey Bottoms," the fertile plain where the Ohio and Little Miami Rivers join.

Indians had cultivated corn on the land for many years, and while he feared the savages might hinder the growth of the community, Stites expected the settlement to prosper. However, it was the rampaging river and not the rampaging redskins that endangered the colony. Frequent floods forced the inhabitants to move to higher ground.

Stites donated the land for the church and burying ground on a hill away from the river bank, out of reach of the water. On this knoll, a meeting house was begun in 1792, For two years before the crude log church was built, the Columbia Baptist Church hadbeen meeting in a member's home.

Peaceful at first, the Indians soon became hostile, killing several settlers and capturing others. Members attending church services had to carry firearms, and a bounty of $30 was set for each Indian scalp. Only after the Treaty of Greenville In 1795 was the Indian threat removed,  permitting the migration of Columbians to inland heights.

In 1808, the church itself moved from Columbia to Duck Creek, and the congregation took the name of Duck Creek Church. After several changes in name and location, the congregation finally became known as the Hyde Park Baptist Church. The cemetery, however, remains on its original site, and the location of the church is marked by an inscribed column from the old Columbia Post Office'

On the 135th anniversary of the founding of Columbia, a monument to Major Stites was unveiled in the cemetery. The marker was the gift of the late James P. Orr, former president of the Potter Shoe Company. The celebration, under the chairmanship of the Rev. John F. Herget and Councilman Edwin E. Kellogg, was financed by Richard K. LeBiond, W. F. Robertson, Louis Drach, B. H. Kroger and the Rev. Mr. Herget .For many years, memorial services were held in the cemetery on Decoration Day, but during World War 11, the services were discontinued and the graveyard was all but forgotten.

      After vandals struck the cemetery  in the spring of 1961, citizens made a concerted effort to remedy the damage. The Park Board, in charge of maintenance, promised more attention would be paid to the plot. The police department arranged for daily inspections. Ninety, fifth-grade  students from College Hill School  went in buses chartered by The Enquirer to clean up the debris. In compositions, the children expressed their ideas. One student,  Debbie Colter,  wrote, "I feel it is a great shame to let our ancestors be in a dirty cemetery like that..”

Another student was philosophical. "You canalways build skyscrapers and other buildings but you never can build something historical an over again."  Dwight Moxley noted the generation gap. "Here we kids go again Most of the time we're just talking  through  our hats,   and it ends  up that  you adults don't believe or listen to us any more. But this time, we won't  take no for an answer .... we're just  kids, but we'll help because we are  aware and proud of what those settlers did for us."   Ironically, the devastation ended   with the restoration of the cemetery  Park benches have been added, and  today the Pioneer's Cemetery is a  landmark for students of Cincinnati history.

Ruth Engelken is a journalism

teacher at the University of Cincinnati   

Evening   College and an  editorial associate

of Writer's Digest Magazine.

Sunday  April 12,1970