Opening and Thanks
This month’s CNO 2.0 meeting was held at Underground Chuck’s, 2260 Miamisburg Centerville Road. Greg Fay welcomed everyone and thanked the team at Underground Chuck’s for the food, the space, and the beverages.
Greg also reminded members that the heart of CNO is a heart to serve, and that financial backing is what makes the rest possible. He announced a $2,500 donation to the South Community Behavioral Health Youth Mental Health Summer Camp.
$50,000 Long-Range Planning Gift to the Library
Patrick Arehart, who serves on the Long-Range Planning Committee, explained that the club is making a $50,000 gift to the Washington-Centerville Public Library, split across three spaces at the renovated Centerville branch: a tactile interactive wall inside the Children’s section (modeled on the well-loved one at the Woodbourne branch), two or three outdoor interactive panels at the entrance to the Children’s section, and the library’s new Creativity Commons maker space. The Long-Range Planning Committee and the CNO Board both voted unanimously, and the committee is already working to build a pipeline of larger causes the club can back going forward.
Announcements
Euchre Night, Sunday May 31 at Contempo Roast
Connie Risch announced that Euchre is back, Sunday, May 31, at Contempo Roast. Arrival at 6:30 (please not before 6:00, since the venue needs the setup time), with play starting by 7:00 and wrapping by 9:00. Please sign up using the Member Calendar.
Save the Date: America’s Semiquincentennial Picnic, July 18
Connie also asked everyone to save the date for July 18, when CNO will celebrate America’s Semiquincentennial (our nation’s 250th birthday) at the Optimist Shelter in Oak Grove. Plan on three-legged races, sack races, a watermelon seed spitting contest, and pie eating and baking contests. The club will provide hot dogs, hamburgers, and non-alcoholic beverages, with the rest potluck. More details to come.
Fishing Derby, Saturday June 6 at RecPlex
Greg Fay reminded members that the Fishing Derby is Saturday, June 6, from 8:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at RecPlex. Volunteers are needed. Please sign up using the Member Calendar.
Next CNO 2.0, Thursday June 18 at Heavier Than Air Brewing Company
Next month’s CNO 2.0 is Thursday, June 18, at 5:30 p.m. at Heavier Than Air Brewing Company. The speaker will be Liz Fultz, Director of the Washington-Centerville Public Library, with an update on the renovations at Centerville Library. Please sign up using the Member Calendar.
Centerville-Washington History with Karen King
Greg introduced Karen King, who has led Marketing and Communications for Centerville-Washington History for about six years. Along with her marketing role, she has authored historical pieces for the organization, including a study of the Centerville Quarry, once the largest in the area, located north of East Franklin Street and west of Clyo Road. Centerville-Washington History’s mission is to connect the community to its heritage by collecting, preserving, interpreting, and promoting local history. Karen covered the three sites, the new exhibits opening this year, and several local stories everyone has heard but does not always know the full version of.
Three Sites, Three Different Roles
The Walton House
The Walton House, at 89 West Franklin just down from the Brunch Pub, is the organization’s headquarters and doubles as a house museum and rotating exhibit space. (And yes, the Brunch Pub building was Centerville’s original public high school.) The name comes from William and Mary Walton, the last family to own the house. William was a brother of Edith Walton Deeds, wife of Colonel Deeds of Carillon Park and Moraine Farm, which gives the organization a small thread back to wider Dayton history. The Waltons died without children, and the house passed to Centerville-Washington History in 1971, only a few years after the organization itself was founded in 1966. That makes this year its 60th anniversary, the same year as the country’s 250th.
The Nutt Cottage
The Nutt Cottage, across from Routsong Funeral Home next to Metropolitan Dry Cleaners, was bequeathed by Lois Murray on the condition that a local history organization be formed to receive it. One was, and Lois served as its first president. Today the Nutt Cottage is the organization’s archives and research center, where Curator Susan Melville works by appointment. If you have ever wondered what your building looked like decades ago, this is where to ask.
The Asahel Wright House
The Asahel Wright House sits next to Graeter’s and City Barbecue, with the little frame School Museum out in front. The city of Centerville owns both buildings and leases them to Centerville-Washington History for a dollar a year. Asahel Wright was a great-uncle of the Wright Brothers (his brother was their grandfather), and his 1806 stone home is one of the oldest stone buildings in the area, with a noticeably low ceiling in the hearth room. The School Museum, set up as a one-room schoolhouse, hosts every third grader in the community (Incarnation and Spring Valley included) at no charge. Wrong answers earn the dunce hat, and the students roll fruit down the aisle to thank their teacher.
New Exhibits for 2026
Two new exhibits opened this year. The Walton House is showing “60 Years of Preserving History,” the organization’s 60th anniversary exhibit. The Asahel Wright Museum has a new exhibit called “Celebrating America 250,” about how this community celebrates together and how that has changed over time.
Karen used the exhibit to clear up a small piece of local history: Americana did not replace the Ox Roast. The two overlapped for a stretch in the 1970s. The Ox Roast was a PTA and Lions Club fundraiser. Americana grew out of a small chamber-of-commerce-style group supporting local businesses. The Ox Roast eventually faded and Americana stuck. The exhibit also features 10 to 12 display cases from local metal detectorist Al Price, who researches and labels everything he finds.
Outdoor Rural Education Center, Thanks to You
Karen made a point to thank the Centerville Noon Optimists. The new Outdoor Rural Education Center, built behind the Walton House, opens in time for Americana and joins school tours starting in the fall. It houses the small, hand-pushed and horse-drawn farming implements that came before mechanized tractors, the tools that made Centerville the rural town it once was. (Old maps of the township are full of names of residents that lived in the area and are now used as road names: Bigger, Whip, Sheehan.) All of the equipment had to go in before the last wall went up, because the exhibit is permanent. The grand opening is Thursday, June 25 at 2:00 p.m., and CNO’s support is part of why it is happening.
Tours, the Podcast, and the Annual Fundraiser
Karen also described the organization’s regular programs:
- Cemetery tours, free, on Saturdays. Two are scheduled in July at the Sugar Creek Baptist Church Cemetery (the oldest local historical cemetery, behind Chiapas across from Incarnation) and the Centerville Cemetery on Maple. Revolutionary War and Civil War soldiers are buried at Sugar Creek, alongside Centerville founders Aaron Nutt and Benjamin Robbins. A November tour returns to the Centerville Cemetery with a Veterans theme.
- The Ghost Walk, run in partnership with the library and the Friends of the Library, will return in October. Karen’s group leans a little less spooky and a little more history, though she does not mind a good firsthand ghost story.
- A Sense of Centerville & Washington Township, the organization’s monthly podcast, is usually released on the last Wednesday. May has two episodes: a Wayne Davis feature coming up, and Jesse Gaither talking Americana and the Ox Roast in the most recent one.
- A Sense of Taste, the organization’s annual fundraiser at Benham’s Grove. Local restaurants donate the food, and last year the event moved into the new event center for the first time.
Cemetery Names That Show Up Around Town
Clarence Magsig (of Magsig School) and C.L. Stingley are both buried in the Centerville Cemetery on Maple. Hadley Watts and Ida Weller are not (Ida is, Karen believes, at David’s Cemetery). Tom Stoltz is also in the Centerville Cemetery, with a small flat marker about 14 by 16 inches. That is a humble footprint for the man who designed Stubbs Park and Countryside Park and ran a nursery out of what is today the Stoltz building behind the RecPlex.
Earl Miller’s Monkey House
Earl Miller built the monkey house as a marketing draw for the Mapeville General Store, which sat at the intersection of Whipp Road and Far Hills (Route 48, also known as Dayton-Lebanon Pike). The Monkey House has been moved twice. The first move came in the early 1960s when Route 48 was widened, and the building landed roughly behind today’s Dunkin’ Donuts (an old Wendy’s, for long-time Centerville residents). After Earl Miller’s death, the store eventually closed, and when the general store was torn down the fire department was set to burn the monkey house as a training exercise. A member of Centerville-Washington History stepped in to save it, with Tom Stoltz among those who helped, and the building was moved a second time to the entrance of Stubbs Park, where it stands today. Karen’s research suggests the plaque dates the building too early; she believes it actually went up in the 1930s. By Karen’s read, Earl Miller was a marketing guy with an outsized case of ADHD: he would drive to Georgia for pecans, drive to Florida for citrus, and was once quoted as saying, “If we don’t sell it, I just enjoy it.”
The Stone House Just North of Nutt Road on Route 48
The stone house located on Route 48 just north of Nutt Road is one of Centerville’s early stone houses, and someone lives in it now. Centerville-Washington History’s book, A Sense of Place, catalogs the stone houses across the township. Karen closed with a piece of pioneer history: one early settler’s diary records that the family did not taste any bread their first winter, because settlers arrived in the spring with just enough time to clear land, raise a log cabin, and plant something to get through to the next year. Centerville was the frontier in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and the first winters were that hard.
Thank You
Thank you, Karen King. Between the organization’s three sites, monthly podcast, tours, and the new Outdoor Rural Education Center, local history has never been easier to find for anyone who wants to look.
Volunteer and Social Event Signups Available Online with the Virtual Clipboard
Did you know you can now sign up to volunteer or participate in social events using a simple online registration form from your phone or PC? The Member Calendar has a complete list of upcoming volunteer opportunities and social events.