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Excerpts from: 

EARLY WAYNE COUNTY SETTLERS AND THEIR RHINELAND ORIGINS
By Lloyd Espenschied
Originally published in The Lyons Republican and Clyde Times, 1958 

The Genial Inn-Keeper
    Philip Dorsheimer was born about ten miles south of Bingen-on-Rhine in the village of Wöllstein , Hesse-Darmstadt, more recently in Rheinhassen, on April 15th, 1797. He married in Pennsylvania Sarah Gorpas; 1821, Aug. 23. Upon the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825-6, Dorsheimer was attracted to Lyons as a flour miller, and a few years thereafter became an inn-keeper. He operated first the Wayne County Hotel (earlier Princess Tavern, later Congress Hall, located on Water Street where is today the Wayne Hotel), and next, as of about 1833, the Lyons Hotel on the northeast corner of William and Montezuma Streets. The latter was known at different times as the Landon Hotel, Patton House and Graham House. It was as a Lyons hotel proprietor, in the period of about 1830 to 1836, that Dorsheimer became a lodestone to his fellow-countrymen, leading them to settle in Wayne. 

    The balconies of his Lyons Hotel were a favorite site for observing the arrival of canal boats, and the hotel itself was popular for arriving passengers. Of the arrival of German immigrants in Lyons, an old-time Yankee, Mrs. DeWitt Parshall, has recalled: "The arrival of a boat load of immigrants was an attraction which brought out many sightseers. What interested us, of course, was the dress which the women wore, conspicuous for its bright colored woolen skirt and oddly shaped little cap. Often the immigrants would get off at the dock or lock and start fires and do their cooking."
    Along the canal to the west of Lyons, especially in Rochester and Buffalo, the Germans settled in even greater numbers. They are said to have accounted for about a third the population of Rochester in the 1880s. O. Turner, in his book of 1843 on the Holland Purchase, noted: "The location of German emigrants upon the Holland Purchase, forms a prominent feature of recent events. In Buffalo, they already compose nearly one-third of the entire population, and are mingled in almost all its branches of business". 
    Having lived the good life in his adopted land, Philip Dorsheimer passed away in 1868, soon after the Civil War, at age 71. His one child, William born in Lyons in 1832, studied law and himself became prominent in New York politics, attaining to the Lieutenant-Governorship. Although the family name Dorsheimer is not known to have survived from this line, it has from other branches in the U.S.A. Certainly there are many descendants of those immigrants whom Philip aided in Wayne County.

Among Those Who Came
    Those who were influenced by Dorsheimer to come to Wayne County we cannot recall in numbers, but we can identify a few. One family is among the writer's ancestors, and it is this which has excited his interest and produced this little study: the family of John Espenschied (1781-1849) that arrived in 1835 and settled about a mile north of Alton, Sodus Township. The farm title was taken actually from Philip Dorsheimer and two associates, Cullen Foster and Daniel Chapman. This, and the fact of the family having come from Sieversheim, a village adjacent to Dorsheimers, is the indication of their having been attracted by him. There is the further circumstance of the oldest son, John Espenscheid, Jr. having come the year before in the company of neighbors, the family of Conrad Young (1786-1862) that settled in Wayne Center. 
    The passenger manifest of the ship on which the Young's came in 1834 has been preserved. (Preserved in the National Archives, Washington, D.C.: Manifest of the Ship Normandy from Havre, France, arriving at the Port of New York August 22, 1834.) Included in a long list of émigrés from Hesse-Darmstadt, is no less than Dorsheimers father, "William Dorsheimer".  The age given, 68, checked the Wöllstein birth record (Evangelical Church). Here, then, is ample proof of the connection between the genial inn-keeper and these two families of Young (originally Jung) and Espenscheid (originally Espenschied). 
    The passenger list bears also the name "Jean Sauer" age 29. No country of origin is listed but apparently he was intended to be included among those from Hesse-Darmstadt. This person appears to have been John Sauer, one of three brothers reported to have come from near Bingen in 1832. They were John, Martin and Christopher Sauer, all of whom settled in Sodus Township, the latter subsequently removing westward.
    A family that came also from Sieversheim, in 1836, is that of Henry Wagner (1793-1867). He and his wife Mary are buried in Ferguson's Corners. They are progenitors of Tusanelda Nusbickel, wife of Dr. Reuben Spencer Simpson of 65 Broad Street, Lyons. Her Nusbickel immigrant ancestor, Frederick (1818-1897) emigrated in 1839 from Dorsheimers native village of Wöllstein , and lived in Sodus, Rose and Lyons. 
    Another family from the village Wöllstein , arriving about 1837, is that of Rodenbach, Daniel (1808-1857) and wife Katharina Weppler, the parents of four children born "over there" and six more to be acquired here. His was an old flour-mill family, as had been Dorsheimers, and the ancestry has been traced far back in history. There were Rodenbachs that settled in Pennsylvania, as there were Dorsheimers. 
    Coming from a range of ten to fifteen miles from Dorsheimers home village, we find other migrants that may have been influenced by Dorsheimer: Dr. Franz L. Brunk was born in 1810 in Kanton Obermoschel in the Palatinate southwest of Wöllstein . He migrated in 1834 to Lyons. There he married an American girl, removed to Indiana, thence to Buffalo where he practiced medicine and became a newspaper editor, and there he introduced to Dorsheimer Gustav Koerner, to whom we are indebted for the inn-keeper's biography. Dr. Brunk finally returned to Germany, evidently disappointed in the "land of unlimited opportunity". 
    Lastly, we recognize two more immigrants who may have owed their Lyons residence to Dorsheimer. John Hano, (Johannes Henno) who in turn became an inn-keeper, stopped off from a canal boat upon seeing on the dock an old friend from his home town, Philip Althen. Althen is reported to have been born about 1810 in Gerbach, Rhine Bavaria, and to have migrated in 1835. This village is some ten miles south of Dorsheimers Wöllstein on the brook Apfelbach, in the Rhine Palatinate. Here we appear to have two more recruits to credit to the magnetic circle of the personable inn-keeper. Doubtless there were many more, and still more attracted secondarily.