Woodside Cemetery

1. The Cemetery will be open for interments from 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. An additional fee will be added for evenings, weekends, and holidays. 
2. All funerals entering the cemetery will be under the charge of the City of Oxford (City). 
3. No interment of two or more bodies shall be made in one grave except in the following circumstances: Parent and infant in one casket; two infants; two cremains; or one casket and one cremain.
4. Payment arrangements and all fees are due to the City of Oxford prior to interment.

1. A proper monument or marker may be erected by the owner of each lot subject to the Rules and Regulations of the City of Oxford.
2. One headstone shall be permitted on each grave. Headstones are restricted to a maximum of 40”x 14”. Double headstones are restricted to a maximum of 88” x 14”. Headstone foundation installation is the responsibility of the chosen monument company. 
3. One family memorial may be placed on a family plot at the head of the plot. Footstone markers may be used in conjunction with a family memorial and be placed at the foot of each grave and be no larger than 24” x 12” x 8”.
4. Military Markers are permitted to be placed on the monument or in front of the monument on the space when necessary.
5. Lot corner marker posts shall be of monumental stone placed level with the grade. Initials must be cut in, not raised. All corner posts will be set by the monument company.
6. Above ground mausoleums are not permitted.
7. Flat monuments that cover the entire grave space are not permitted. 
8. All monuments and markers are required to have a foundation. Foundations are to be installed by the customer’s chosen monument company. All foundations shall have a 4” border. Monument companies must contact the City Prior to installation for proper placement.

1. General cemetery maintenance does not include maintenance, repair, or replacement of any memorial or monument on any grave. This also does not mean doing special or unusual work on the cemetery such as work cause by impoverishment of the soil, damage to graves or monuments as the result of any act of God, common enemy, vandals, thieves, malicious mischief, unavoidable accidents, invasions, explosions, riots or by order of any military or civil authority, whether the damage is direct or collateral.

1. The City of Oxford shall maintain the planting of trees and shrubs to preserve and maintain landscaping. Individual beds of flowers, trees, shrubs, decorations, benches, etc. are not permitted. 
2. No plants, flowers, shrubs or trees shall be permitted to be planted on any lot or grave. If any tree, shrub, or plant planted on a lot or grave becomes detrimental or inconvenient to adjacent lots, walks or drives by means of its roots, branches, or otherwise, it shall be removed by the City of Oxford.
3. If a planted tree or shrub becomes diseased or damaged, it will be removed by the City and not replaced. 
4. The City of Oxford shall not be liable for floral pieces, decorations, baskets, etc...
5. No artificial flowers are permitted on graves from April 1st through October 31st unless they are placed directly on the headstone or in a headstone vase.
6. Funeral flowers will be removed by the City after 3 days.
7. Decorations and flowers placed on graves for special holidays during the mowing season will be removed the following Friday.
8. Winter decorations will be permitted from November 1st through March 31st. If the decorations become faded or unsightly, they will be removed by the City.
9. Concrete benches, statues, vases, etc. are not permitted.
10. One American flag is permitted per grave. 
11. Any item that could create a safety hazard for the staff or visitors will be removed. If in doubt about any item, please call the City of Oxford Service Department for assistance. No liability is assumed by the City for any decoration.
12. No decorations shall be hung or attached to any tree.

1. Cemetery visitors or those attending funerals are prohibited from picking flowers, or injuring any tree, shrub or plant, or defacing any memorials or other structure within the cemetery. 
2. For the best interest of the cemetery, the City is authorized to make additional temporary rules which may be needed from time to time to meet emergencies not covered by these Rules and Regulations.
3. Special cases may arise in which literal enforcement of a rule may impose unnecessary hardship. The City therefore, reserves the right to make exceptions, suspensions, or modifications of any of these Rules and Regulations without notice, when in the judgment of the City of Oxford Service Director or his/her designee, such actions appear necessary, and such temporary exception, suspension or modification shall in no way be construed as affecting the general application of such Rules and Regulations.
4. The City hereby expressly reserves the right to adopt additional Rules and Regulations or to amend, alter, or repeal any rule, regulation, article, section paragraph or sentence in these Rules and Regulations, at any time and without notice.
5. The right of the City to enlarge, reduce, replat, or change the boundaries or grading of the cemetery, or a section or sections, including the right to modify or change the location of or remove or regrade roads, drives, or walks, or any part thereof, is hereby reserved.
6. The instrument of conveyance of these Rules and Regulation and any amendments thereto constitute the sole agreement between the City and the plot owner. The statement of any employee or agent, unless confirmed in writing by the Management, shall in no way bind the City.

The City is hereby empowered to enforce all Rules and Regulations and to exclude from the cemetery any person violating them. The City shall have charge of the grounds and the building including the conduct of funerals, traffic, employees, plot owners and visitors and at all times shall have supervision and control of all persons in the Woodside Cemetery.

Fees:	Cost:	Notes:
Gravesite Plots	$225
Opening & Closing of Gravesite
Monday - Friday	$375	Additional $200 charge after 3:30 PM weekdays and on weekends

Oxford's original cemetery was located at the southwest corner of Spring Street and College Avenue on land given to the village for this purpose by the trustees of Miami University. The first recorded burial at the site was of 11 year old William Keely, who died May 2, 1818. When, in October 1853, Oxford Village Council granted a right-of-way through the cemetery for the C.H. & I Junction Railroad, this was no longer appropriate as the town's only graveyard.

A new Oxford Cemetery, privately incorporated with its own Board of Trustees, was opened in August, 1855, on Colerain Pike (Route 27), just south of town. Some people who bought lots in the new cemetery transferred their family graves to the new location. In 1865, a Catholic Cemetery (Mt. Olivet) was opened at the corner of Church and Locust Streets. Burials were made at all three sites until May 8, 1876, when the Oxford Village Council minutes record that it receive "...a petition to prevent any more interments in the Old Graveyard." Council minutes continue:

May 8, 1877 - "The Committee on Law to confer with Township Trustees relative to condemning the Old Graveyard."

June 4, 1877 - "Township Trustees not inclined to do anything."

July 1, 1878 - "the Graveyard Committee reported in favor of condemning the village graveyard as a nuisance and prohibiting burials after September 1, 1989."

July 2, 1878 - "The Graveyard Committee reports that it is impossible to condemn before spring. Interments allowed until further notice."

By 1880, however, the Township Trustees were ready to act. Their records for May 15th show the purchase of six and 5/100 acres of land from Harriet N. Logan, Martha N. Rose and James Logan for the price of $543.75. This land was on the southside of Chestnut Street (then called Exterior Street South) between Oak and Campus and outside the village limits. On June 26th, the Trustees paid James A. Kennedy $20.62 for surveying the new Township Cemetery, and on July 10t, 1880 the first burial took place: Margaret Boston, who died of consumption, and was buried in Lot 15.

At some point the new graveyard was christened Woodside Cemetery. 

In September of 1882, a large group of graves was moved into Woodside and re-buried in plots purchased by their families. Toward the back of the cemetery, in Lot 8, is a group of graves that appear to have been moved in to Woodside at one time and laid out in neat, tight rows, many with both head and foot stones. This area is known as the 'Pioneer Quad' and it is assumed that these people no longer had any relatives living in the Oxford area and were re-interred by the village. Among those in the Pioneer Quad are Oxford's first mayor, Colonel Isaiah Leigh, who was a veteran of the War of 1812, several veterans of the Revolutionary War, and a distressing number of victims of the cholera epidemic that struck Oxford in 1849.

Council minutes for July 16, 1888 state: "Special meeting of council to take action in regard to final abandonment of the old graveyard. All bodies have been removed so far as is known. Total expense $305.85. Committee discharged."

Since Woodside was now located in the township rather than in the village, its administration fell to the Township Trustees. Through the years, the Township Clerk's ledger of Receipts and Expenditures reveals payments for fence posts, work on the road, and occasionally for the burial of an indigent individual. 

There is no record of deeds for plots sold in the early ears that can be found today. We do know that while the layout and numbering of the lots has remained consistent, the original plots were 16 1/2 X 16 1/2 foot squared (called 'poles') that could take up to 10 burials. A system of plots with a number for each individual grave was instituted in 1962 and was updated by a new survey in 1981. Woodside's Record of Interments was beautifully kept for about 30 years, and then the record keeping disintegrated. Several local funeral directors, Fred Cormier and Charles Marshall in particular, kept detailed records of individual funerals and from these it has been possible to document many of the interments between 1921 and 1947. Gaps do remain, however.

Searching through the old records reveals interesting details. Woodside holds two presidential namesakes: Thomas Jefferson, born on an unknown date in Kentucky, died here in 1898 of "diabetes and old age," and is buried in Lot 2; and Andrew Jackson, who died in 1933 at age 87 and was a veteran of the U.S. Colored Troops of the Civil War, is in Lot 12. The oldest man buried there is Elijah East who was born in 1777 and died in 1883 after a lifespan of 106 years. The oldest women is Edith Jane Stevens Langford who was born in 1823 and died in 1932 after a lifespan of 109 years. 

The Great Flood of March, 1913 left victims for Woodside: Jane Parrish - 70, Luster Parris - 18, and Elcie Ross - 34, are listed in sequence as having drowned and been buried on April 3rd. Perhaps they lived out along one of the township creeks that were rushing to join the Great Miami River. A poignant entry in Charles Marshall's records is of Clara Fay Ralston, 13 month old, with the accompanying note: "Mr. and Mrs. M.C. Ralston and family of 9 children, motoring through from Longview, Texas to Detroit, Michigan." The date was August, 1933 - the Great Depression. 

On a lighter note, there is one grave in Woodside that lies north and south, contrary to tradition in Christian cemeteries of placing the deceased so they face the east, considered the best position to await the dawn of Judgement Day.

Woodside Cemetery is a community institution of which we can all be proud. Each Memorial Day, it blazes with flags, honoring our veterans of wars that span the entire history of our nation. The remainder of the year it is an oasis of quiet beauty on the edge of our small city.

Maurice Rocco