Who Are the Dorsts?

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From Bavaria to Pittsburgh in Five Easy Generations

Thanks to Jan Waite, a distant cousin of ours in Ohio who has done a major job tracing her family roots, we can trace our branch of the Dorst family tree back to Jacob Dorst, born in 1774 in Bavaria, Germany. Jacob and his family came to America between 1836 and 1840 and settled in Ohio, (which has a lot of Dorsts, according to Ms. Waite). Between 1900 and 1910, our particular twig of the Dorst tree (Arthur and Cora) moved to Pittsburgh, PA with their two sons. The younger son, who appears to have been named Dwight or Wilson Dwight, died young without issue; the older was Jacob Mott Dorst, born February 17, 1894, who became the patriarch of our clan. You can browse or download Jan's full listing of the early generations or the "tree" I drew showing just our own branches, from Jacob1 to Jacob Mott5.

The Dispersion

Jacob and his wife, Lillian Elizabeth Schmidt, had five children, 18 grandchildren, 35 great-grandchildren, and 28 great-great-grandchildren, who are scattered from Oregon to Florida. You can browse or download assorted lists and charts of these people and their spouses or significant others, with addresses and important dates.

The Faces

There are collections of Dorst photographs on this website, and we invite others.

If you'd like me to build an album from your photos, send me the pictures and captions. I don't have PowerPoint on my machine, but so far that's the only format I've had problems with. The easiest format for me to use to build an Album is a folder containing .jpg files, plus a .txt or .doc document containing:

an album title
any introductory remarks, anecdotes, history, etc.
a list of all file names with the captions you would like
break points and subtitles, if the pictures should be split into groups

If you already have your pictures available online, I'd be happy to publish the access instructions here. To send things to me, attach them to an e-mail . If you have large volumes of data, e-mail me and we'll figure it out.

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last revised: 02/17/06