DOSS-L Archives

From: "Susan Reynolds" <>
Subject: Re: [DOSS] Doss's
Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2003 03:13:47 -0600
References: <f3.2642c75e.2b43e96a@aol.com>

Hello, Ruth. I'm Susan Reynolds. My lovely, wonderful (truly, I love her
dearly) mother-in-law, who is also Susan Reynolds, is a Doss. Her father
was Linas Bernard Doss b 1896
AL. His father was John B. "Alex, Alleck, Ellick, Alexander" Doss b. 1861
GA. We haven't been able to find his parents yet, but Libbie and I both
think it may be James G. (Green) of Canton, Cherokee Co., GA. We'll track
him down
one of these days. Libbie and I have had some lovely chats about the
Dosses, among other things,
and I have enjoyed that very much. We are much alike in our approach to
research and I appreciate the fact that she states what is verified and what
is thought to be but not proven and then gives multiple possibilities to
look at before any conclusions are drawn. It opens up some thought avenues
that might otherwise remain closed.

I'm not surprised you hadn't heard those two names before. In the grand
scheme of things,
the family members are really tiny in the US, probably less than 500 who
carry the surnames, although
there are many more that carry the blood but not the names. I'm not sure
they are any larger abroad.
With only one, or maybe two immigrant families in the DeBurgers, they tend
to disappear into the masses.
The Daubenheyers had only one immigrant family. And, I suspect Daubenheyer
is not the only spelling.
I'm thinking the ending could also be heuer or hauer although the
translation I found for the name was on-line
and spelled Daubenheyer. One alternate spelling was Dabenheyer and I even
found one of them on the census
as Debenhin or something like that (never would have found it if it hadn't
been near someone else
I was looking for and the given and middle names hadn't caught my eye).
Hopefully, the LDS site will
have more of the records extracted and posted from Europe and more
information will come to light.

The talk of the origins of the Doss name has been one of those avenues of
thought and has started me on a crusade. I LOVE the origins of words and
names. Funny thing to enjoy, but some would think playing with dead people
is even stranger (great big grin!). I got onto the ships lists that are
on-line and in my subscription services. Overwhelmingly, the immigrants
were German. I have 42 pages of entries, averaging between 5-7 entries per
page. In all of those, I found 2 that gave Britain as point of origin or
birth, one from Russia. 10-15 were names whose origin could not be
determined - John or Mary or some other very common name that could be the
anglicized version or their given name, as opposed to names like Johan Jacob
which is about 99.999% sure to be German or of Germanic origin. The
remainder
had origins in Germany. I also did a search of the 1851 census in Britain
and there were
only 2 Doss entries for the nation on the on-line index - a husband and wife
in Devonshire. Admittedly, there may be more that are not on that
particular index
and I did not do a search of any variant spellings, just Doss, but it was a
surprising result.

The earliest record I found of a Doss immigrant was one Bernhart Doss in
1764 aboard
the ship Boston, arriving at Philadelphia 10 Nov 1764. I noted something
interesting about
his name that may have some bearing on the variations on the name Doss and
give some
other directions in which to look: In German, my favorite of the three I
studied, the sound of
the vowels a, o and u are changed by a punctuation mark called an umlaut -
two side by side dots
above the letter, like a colon turned sideways and raised above the letters.
Bernhart Doss' name
was spelled with an umlaut on the captain's list and the signature lists for
the oath of allegiance
and oath of abjuration. This means the name was pronounced more akin to
Duss (u like in Dutch) and
not Dahs at all. In fact, the spelling Doss without the umlaut would be
pronounced Dose in German.
To get the sound we use for Doss today with the ah sound the name would have
been DASS.
It gets even better. The plural of the name would be to add an "en". When
asked what their name was
(Wie heissen Sie?) the answer would have been "Wir heissen die Dossen
(umlaut over the o)"
We are the Dosses, where the name would be pronounced dussen , again u like
in Dutch or
the o in dozen. That would be anglicized to Dussen/Dozen and if the umlaut
was
dropped to Dossen/Dosen with a long o. Doss singluar would be anglicized to
Dose, with the umlaut
perhaps to Duse/Duce. Then once people really got hold of it and looked at
the name
with English eyes, we know what happened - it became Dawes and any number of
other spellings,
including Dawson. I originally thought Dawson was probably one of the
patronymic names, but now I'm
not so sure. Has anyone ever heard of a given name Daw? (I know Doss is
used in the census records as a given and middle name, but this was long
after the surname was developed.) Could be Da son (father's son from the
Scottish
pronunciation of the familiar for father), but this is not likely. I think
it is more likely a corruption of
the German name. This site has audio pronunciation if anyone is interested:
http://www.wm.edu/CAS/modlang/gasmit/pronunciation/pronunce.html

Does anyone have any idea when the surname first appeared in the British
Isles? I found a wonderful little
time table for the various waves of migration from Germany in the
1600-1800's in "Pennsylvania German
Settlers" and we might be able to find something from the date the name
appears. It also gives the migration
routes and a little of the history of what was going on and who was
migrating. It explained what the Dunker
faith was and I laughed myself silly. Being in the ministry, I should have
recognized it immediately - silly me.
The Dunkers were what the Baptists were called in PA. And my husband grew
up Baptist before he became
a Salvationist! Shame on me!

Once I've finished with a few more records, I'll get a data base together
and provide it to anyone interested in the Doss immigrations. I will
probably NOT do the variant spellings at this time because it will take far
too long.

One other interesting note - my husband's grandfather - Linas Bernard - had
two German names. Makes me wonder if there isn't something in that that I
should be looking at. Have a good one all. Susan.

----- Original Message -----
From: <>
To: <>
Sent: Wednesday, January 01, 2003 12:49 AM
Subject: Re: [DOSS] Doss's


> Dear "Cousin of Dr. James DeBurger" (I still don't know your
ame....o} )
>
> Considering that my family told us we were Dutuch descent, I'm wondering
why
> we didn't hear about the names DeBurger and Daubenheyer. My great
> grandfather Joseph Henry Franklin Doss was born in Franklin County VA, and
> his family must have separated early in the game from the other Doss
> families. They probably came to Pennsylvania, too, in the beginning and
then
> moved south to VA.
>
> I'm at a loss to when and where my family came from when they left for
> America. We can't locate Joseph after the War Between the States. If
you're
> acquainted with Libbie Griffin you'll know that she is an avid searcher;
and
> she has tried, along with my cousin in OK and I, to find Joseph's parents.
> He was born in 1827 according to his marriage certificate and censuses.
>
> I read your letter with much interest and appreciate your writing me about
> your family. Thanks so much.
>
> Ruth Doss Hanley
>
>
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> Interested in becoming the list manager? Go here:
> http://resources.rootsweb.com/surnames/adoptrequest.html
>
>
> ==============================
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go to:
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>

This thread:

• Re: [DOSS] Doss's by "Susan Reynolds" <>