Brewster Cemetery

Brewster Cemetery is a small, rural cemetery also formerly known as Oakland Baptist Church Cemetery. The property was owned by Isaac Howell, Joseph Davis and then Peter LeRoy before being sold to the Oakland Baptist Church Society in 1875. The church operated the cemetery until around 1938. Avon Township (now Rochester Hills) took ownership of the cemetery by court order in 1974. The earliest known burial at Brewster Cemetery was made in 1828 and the last was in 1904. The historic cemetery is now inactive and is maintained as a monument to Avon Township's earliest pioneer families.

Burials in this small cemetery date primarily from 1828 to 1899. Brewster Cemetery is the burial location of the pioneer Dutton and Hubbell families. The first burial, of Caroline Whitney, was made in 1828. The last is from 1904. Fifty-three burials can be identified from existing headstones; no burial books or interment records are known to exist.The cemetery was operated by the Oakland Baptist Church Society from 1875 until 1938, when the church body ceded operation of the cemetery to Avon Township. Oakland Baptist Church, also known locally as Oakland Church, was nearby on the southeast corner of Adams and Dutton roads.

Among the gravestones of this cemetery can be seen the names of the Hubbell, Dutton, Riggs. and Sherman families.

Avon Township filed a lawsuit to acquire the deed to the cemetery property in 1974; the lawsuit was uncontested as the church had long since disbanded. The historic cemetery is now inactive.

In November 1975, Rochester Adams High School placed a time capsule in the cemetery, to be opened for the U.S. Tricentennial.

Peter F. LeRoy and Laura LeRoy his wife to the Trustees of the Oakland Baptist Church Society, 15 March 1875, approximately two and one half acres of land on the northeast corner of the southwest quarter of section 5, Avon Township, Oakland County Record of Deeds, liber 122, p.206.

Remer, Deborah. "The Brewster Cemetery - A Short History of the Cemetery and Its Inhabitants."

Sklar, Robert A. "Township to Care for Cemetery," Rochester Observer & Eccentric, October 2, 1975.

Parker, Kathy and Robert A. Sklar, "Brewster: A Cemetery With Lost Origins," Rochester Eccentric, February 24, 1977, p.3A.

"Vandals Strike Cemetery," Rochester Eccentric, September 19, 1977, p.6A.

"History of Oakland Church as Read at the Homecoming, August 24, by Mrs. Jennie Hilton," Rochester Era, September 9, 1921, p.1.

"Church Members Sue: Want Town Board to Repair Cemetery," Pontiac Press Gazette, November 25 1918, p.12.

Kelly, Spencer Mark. Gone, but Not Forgotten: History of the Oakland / Brewster Cemetery. [Midvale, Utah]: [S.M. Kelly], 2000. 

Hennen, Mike. "Little Cemetery Almost Forgotten," Oakland Press, May 28, 1974, p.B-1.