One of Clermont County’s ‘Lost Villages’

By Rick Crawford

Centerville or Centreville, it has been spelled both in ways in records that have been found, was located at the intersection of Amelia-Olive Branch Road and Clough Pike in Batavia Township. It received its name because of its location halfway between the villages of Amelia and Olive Branch. Amelia-Olive Branch Road was known as Centerville Pike and in the mid-1950’s schedules of the Cincinnati Transit System still called it that.

The little village was never formally planned and was never incorporated. It is located on land that was surveyed on May 18, 1805, for John Watts. William Lytle was the deputy surveyor. The survey was recorded on May 27, 1805 in the county courthouse at Williamsburg, Ohio.

Immediately to the west, H. D. Brazier purchased land here in 1819 from Gen. Edward Stevens who owned 2,262 acres which had been surveyed on May 26, 1788 by John O’Bannon. The Stevens survey was made before any whites lived in the county.

O. S. and John Brazier also came to this area in the early 1800’s. The latter was a road viewer (checking and approving the laying of roads in the county) sometime after 1810. He died in Centerville in 1838. His sons also lived in the area.

Laban Brazier located nearby. He was a Methodist preacher and is credited with performing all the funeral services in town. Batavia Twp. was once a part of Union Twp, and in June 1813, he was appointed a tax commissioner for that township. He was also a county appraiser at $1 per day. He died in 1843, leaving his sons James, John and Elijah in the vicinity.

William Brunaugh came to this locale in 1816 and died sometime around 1839 from complications from a leg amputation. His sons William and John became prominent in Batavia Township.

The Braziers were prominent in the formative days of the Clermont County Agricultural Society, which was organized on June 9, 1849. It was the foundation organization of today’s Clermont County Fair.

In 1876, George Fishback and Henry D. and Mary Brazier gave some of their land to the proposed Cincinnati and Portsmouth Railroad (soon to be name the Cincinnati, Georgetown and Portsmouth, or CG&P). The land was given on the condition that a station for the railroad be placed in Centerville. It was agreed upon and the train station became known as Braziers Station, the name which the post office there would now use.