DAR members visit Waldschmidt home

VW independent/submitted information

Ten members and guests of Isaac Van Wart Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, traveled to Milford for lunch at Nela’s Tea Room and then onto Camp Denison for a tour of the Christian Waldschmidt Homestead.

The home was built in 1804 in Hamilton County at Camp Dennison. Mr. Waldschmidt came to southern Ohio in 1796 and bought 1,140 acres to make a home for himself and his family. Ohio was then part of the Northwest Territory. Ohio became a state in 1803 and the Waldschmidt Family was known as “First Ohioans”.

During the Civil War, the Waldschmidt Homestead was used as headquarters for General Joshua Bates and later as a hospital for returned wounded soldiers. There is a smaller stone home built by Waldschmidt for his daughter that now houses a Civil War Museum.

Early in the 1940s, Mr. and Mrs. Chester Kroger (Kroger Supermarkets) owned the property, and later donated it to the Ohio State Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, with the understanding the old buildings on the property were to be restored to their original state. The house is perhaps the finest example of a fieldstone house west of the Alleghenies.

When the Daughters of the American Revolution took on the restoration, care, and exhibition of this beautiful old building, it was a shambles. Every restoration feature resembles the original building, to the point where the Waldschmidt family would feel right at home should they return. Docents offer tours by appointment at waldschmidt@ohiodar.org.