After Ohio was opened for settlement by the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 and made more secure by the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, German settlers from Pennsylvania arrived at Camp Dennison in 1796 in search of freedom and opportunity. A group of 20 Pietist families led by Christian Waldschmidt settled on fertile land near the big bend of the Little Miami River, founded Hamilton County’s first and most successful mill village, “Neu Deutschland,” and developed it into a prosperous community. Waldschmidt purchased land from John Cleves Symmes, laid out the village, rerouted part of the river for a millrace, and built a gristmill, distillery, cloth and fulling mills, and in 1810 the area’s first paper mill, which supplied most of Cincinnati’s paper. He also operated a general store, served as minister, oversaw the education of mill apprentices, and guided the village as it shipped goods to New Orleans and the east coast. After his death in 1814, his son-in-law Matthais Kugler took over the mills, but although the Little Miami Railroad’s opening in 1842 initially helped the village, its mills could not compete with Cincinnati’s steam mills. After fire destroyed the paper mill in 1848, Kugler did not rebuild and moved to Milford. Following the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861, Governor William Dennison set aside more than $1 million to train and equip 10,000 troops, and the former village site was chosen for a large instruction camp near Cincinnati because of its rail connections and the army’s distrust of Kentucky’s southern sympathies. Renamed Camp Dennison, the land was leased by the government for a hospital and for the training of 75,000 Ohio soldiers during the Civil War, and the remaining residents of Germany moved to nearby towns. After the war, black families moved into the sparsely populated village, homes were built from wood taken from demolished barracks, and Camp Dennison developed as a commuter town linked to Cincinnati. By 1890 it had a brick school, dry goods store, post office, train depot, two taverns, two churches, and the Granite Improvement Company. Efforts by developers and residents to rename the village Grand Valley failed because railroad officials objected to changing schedules that already used Camp Dennison. The town later remained a small country community with a post office, churches, and an integrated population of about 300.