I love sharing history! I enjoy seeing people connect with their ancestors, understand their communities they live in, and enjoying their rich heritage! I do this in many ways!
If you are interested in learning more about your own family history… then here is a link to the City of St. Charles Adult and Continuing Education Genealogy classes that I teach…
Genealogy
Have you been putting off starting your family tree? Learn the basics of genealogy or refresh your previous skills. Discover new ideas, how to organize your inquiries, and where to find the best programs and platforms for online research. Take the steps to permanently preserve your family’s records and history. A morning and evening session is being offered. Prerequisite: Must have basic computer and online research skills.
Genealogy: One Day Workshop
This accelerated, fast-paced workshop includes all of the components of beginning genealogy and is designed with refreshers for all of those who think they are pros! Prerequisite: Must have basic computer and online research skills.
As Executive Director of Missouri Germans Consortium, I like to provide a variety of resources for anyone interested in their heritage through the Missouri Germans Consortium, I share several blogs, provide tours and public programs, teaching genealogy classes in St. Charles, and have written several books. Missouri Germans Consortium worked with the Missouri Humanities Council compiling the inventory of Missouri’s German Heritage Corridor. This incentive provided a wealth of information about Missouri’s rich German heritage, and all of the people and place that are important. Now the German-American Heritage Foundation of the U.S.A. has announced a similar nationwide German-American Heritage Survey for their 40th Anniversary. In 2016, I was so honored to receive the German American Friendship Award for this work in promoting U.S. and German friendship.
From Dorris….
I’ve always been interested in history since I was a young girl when my Great grandfather included me in researching our family history. My passion for history next led me to co-chair Warren County Missouri’s celebration of its’ Sesquicentennial (150th Anniversary). After I began writing newspaper columns on local history, the Warren County Tribune asked me to write a pictorial history of Warren County, A Window Through Time. Over the years, as editor of Der Maibaum, the journal of the Deutschheim Verein, we brought stories of German interests to the Friends of the Deutschheim State Historic Site in Hermann, Missouri. Power of the People a corporate history of the Cuivre River Rural Electric Cooperative followed. In 2004, Editor Don Heinrich Tolzmann included my essay on Gottfried Duden in Missouri’s German Heritage. I worked with the Missouri Lewis and Clark Bicentennial from 2002-2006. I wrote Warren County for Arcadia Publishing Images of America Series. I am currently working with Brett Dufur on Exploring Missouri’s German Heritage (working title) to be published by Missouri Life Magazine in the fall of 2017.
In 2009, Missouri Germans partnered with the Reseinde Sommer-Republic, sharing the story of the Giessen Emigration Society, which came to Missouri in 1834. That resulted in the Exhibition UTOPIA – REVISITING A GERMAN STATE IN AMERICA which originated in Giessen Germany, and finished in St. Louis Missouri. The book Utopia: Revisiting a German State in America was released in Germany on November 1, 2013, in conjunction with the Exhibition, and the DVD was released in November 2014.
The Mo-Germans.com blog is where you find all of Missouri Germans Consortium‘s resources, stories, photos, and events. In 2009, the German Reseinde Sommer-Republic, a group of writers, photographers, film makers and historians, began sharing the story of the Giessen Emigration Society, which came to Missouri in 1834 with us. That visit to Missouri resulted in the Exhibition: UTOPIA – REVISITING A GERMAN STATE IN AMERICA and the book
Utopia: Revisiting a German State in America was released in Germany on November 1, 2013, in conjunction with the Exhibition. And the DVD (same title) was released in November 2014.
We provide programs on The German Heritage of Missouri or German Abolitionists in the Civil War which can be scheduled by contacting us by using the form below.
Some of my publications:
Blogs
Missouri Germans Consortium http://mo-germans.com
St. Charles County History http://stcharlescountyhistory.org
Books
Utopia – Revisiting a German State in America
In 1833, two university students from Giessen, Germany, Friedrich Muench and Paul Follenius, decided to immigrate to America and settle in the west. They wanted to create a German utopia in Missouri, and they recruited others to join them by distributing throughout Germany a promotional pamphlet detailing their ambitious plans. The resulting participants spanned various religions, cities, and villages and called themselves the Giessen Emigration Society. By July of 1934, each member had settled along the Missouri River, forming a vibrant German segment of the state whose cultural footprint can still be seen and felt today. Paperback: 352 pages Publisher: Edition Falkenberg; Bilingual edition (November 15, 2013) Language: English/German ISBN-10: 3954945959 ISBN-13: 978-3954945955 Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 1.3 x 10.2 inches
Warren County
By 1833, when Warren County was officially created by the State of Missouri, its pages of history were already filled with the lives of famous people. It would become the final resting place of American pioneer and trailblazer Daniel Boone after the Spanish government promised him land in return for bringing settlers. In 1804, when Lewis and Clark and their corps visited, it was the last settlement of whites in the newly purchased Louisiana Territory. This led German-born writer Gottfried Duden to come and see what made this area so appealing to the American pioneers. He returned to his homeland and in 1829 published A Report on a Journey to the Western States of North America, filled with glowing descriptions of a promised land. His book opened the floodgates of German immigrants coming to this nation in the 1830s, and by 1850 nine out of ten residents were German born or of German descent–the largest concentration of German Americans in the state. Series: Images of America, Paperback: 128 pages Publisher: Arcdia Publishing (September 19, 2011) Language: English ISBN-10: 0738582905 ISBN-13: 978-0738582900
A History of Warren County – Collection of Articles for the Warren County Journal 1987-1997
The Man Behind the Book in German Heritage of Missouri, Don Heinrich Tolzmann, Editor, Little Miami Pub.
The Power of People, building today for a better tomorrow: History of the Cuivre River Electric Cooperative; Cuivre River Electric Cooperative, Marceline, MO 1997
A Window Through Time – Pictorial History of Warren County, Eagle Enterprises, Warrenton, MO 1990
