My father's mother's father was Charles Doster; my ancestor chart gives a pictorial view of how I'm related to him.
There is a book entitled The Doster Genealogy by Mrs. Ben Hill Doster (1945, 286p.), which is now out-of-print but can be found through online used book sites and other sources. This book does a wonderful job of establishing where in Germany the Dosters lived, when they emigrated to the United States, and where they settled. There are also biographies of certain key individuals, which make the book much more interesting.
I have written, and am continually updating, a supplement to that book, which attempts to place our branch of the Doster family within the tree presented in it.
The oldest Doster that I have direct knowledge of in our tree is Gottlob Doster; a handwritten sheet from his son, Charles (see below), gives some information regarding him. This register book shows his descendants.
According to the passenger manifest of the Hamburg-American Line steamship SS Gellert, 37-year-old Johannes Horz, his 32-year-old wife Catherine, and their seven children, all from Württemberg, Germany, boarded the ship at Hamburg, Germany, and arrived at the Port of New York on August 25, 1880. The Gellert, under the command of Captain Kuhlewein, was built by Alexander Stephen & Sons in 1874; it weighed 3,533 gross tons, was 375 feet long and 40 feet wide, and could carry 990 passengers (90 first class, 100 second class, 800 third class). It was scrapped in 1897.
One of the seven Horz children on the Gellert was Charles Doster, my great-grandfather, and my Carl Hoerz story has additional information from the passenger manifest, as well as an explanation as to why six of the seven children actually had the surname "Doster", not "Horz" as shown here. After arriving in New York, they went to Waverly Ohio, then to Columbus, Ohio, and finally settled in Buffalo, New York.
Charles Doster married Caroline Frei in 1892. One of his seven children was LeElla Caroline Doster, my grandmother, who in 1928 married my grandfather, Harvey Yearke.
Charles' older brother, Gottlieb, who went by the name "John", owned and operated a butcher shop on Kensington Avenue for many years.
I've heard it claimed that all Dosters are related. The book The Doster Genealogy supports that claim.
The name Doster means "Thyme gatherer" in German.
Doster Genealogy the Next Generation (login required)
http://genforum.genealogy.com/doster/
http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/surname/d/doster.html
http://ancestorguide.com/D/Doster/
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/board/an/surnames.doster
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