Three John Dochstaders, all related, were pioneers of the southern Grand River and thereby lies the confusion that still surrounds the name.

The name Dochstader and its variations (Dockstader, Docksteder, Doxtader, and so on) comes from the German name Dachstaedter, which means a person from the little village of Dachstadt in Bavaria. All Dochstaders (except perhaps the natives) in North America seem to descend from Johan Georg Dachstaedter, who emigrated with his family from the Palatinate (Pfalz) region of what is now Germany in about 1710 possibly by way of London like so many Palatinate refugees. He may have arrived in New York at about the same time as Robert Nellesin, the ancestor of the Nelles family. Like the Nellesins, the Dachstaedters probably went to the refugee camps on the Hudson River. When Governor Hunter ran out of money to support the people in the camps, the Dachstaedters moved to the Schoharie area on land provided by the Six Nations. Later the family moved to Stone Arabia on the Mohawk River.

The oldest of the three John Dochstaders was known as Captain John. The information about his parents is somewhat vague but he was probably the son of Georg Adam Dockstadter, the oldest son of Johan Georg. In the Revolutionary War, Captain John was a lieutenant in the Indian Department where he fought alongside Joseph Brant. After the war, he lost everything in the Mohawk Valley and so Brant gave him part of the Six Nations land on the Grand River. This grant formed a large part of the Township of Canborough. Here he built a house. There is a house located at 244 Highway 17 just north of Dunnville that is reputed to be his house. This brick house would have been his second house; the first being a log cabin. Now it is across the highway from the river, but originally it would have been on the river bank. This was a very important building because at the time there would have been no other building between it and the Mohawk village situated where Brantford is now.

Dochstader House, 244 Highway 17

Captain John was married at least five times but the marriages and the wives are not documented very well. His first wife was a Mohawk and by her he had a son, the second of the John Dochstaders, and referred to as John Jr. By this wife, or perhaps by another Mohawk wife, Captain John had two other children: a son named Joseph (for Joseph Brant) and a daughter named Wari (the Mohawk equivalent of Mary for Molly Brant). Like John Jr., they lived with their Mohawk relatives at the Mohawk village. Captain John's second (or perhaps third) wife was a Seneca, and may have been Sarah Montour (but not Sally Ainse of the Thames River, who was a different Sarah Montour). With this wife, he had another son, whom he named Adam for his father. Adam preferred to live with his Seneca relatives at Buffalo Creek, now Bufalo NY. Captain John's next wife was a Cayuga woman, with whom he had a daughter named Mary. She lived with her father. When his Cayuga wife died, the captain married an Onondaga woman and had a third daughter whom he named Catherine. His last wife was Sarah Burns otherwise known as Sally van Gorder.

John Jr. was born about 1768. After his mother died, he did not live with his father, living instead with his Mohawk family at the Mohawk village further up the Grand River near what is now Brantford. He was more native than European by preference. He later became an important member of the Mohawk nation and may have been the originator of the native family known as the Doxtators.

For some reason that is not too clear, Captain John sold most of his land to Benjamin Canby. In the history of Southwest Ontario there are many unsavoury characters and Canby is one. This is the man who teamed up with Lt.-Governor Simcoe's aide to build a mill on John Burch's land after Burch was prevented from building his own mill on the site. It seems that although he got Capt. Dochstader's land and quickly started to divide and sell it, he never got around to paying Captain John. So it was that when Captain John died in 1801, his daughters Mary and Catherine inherited what was left of the grant, now known as the Dochstader Tract, the house and not much else. Mary, the older daughter, married a neighbour, Chauncey Burnham, about 1800 and had a son, John Dochstader Burnham. in 1801 but died shortly after. Catherine then married Chauncey Burnham about 1803 and they had several children. Sometime before 1816 Chauncey died and Catherine married his brother Lyman. All of these marriages may have been to protect the inheritance because Mary, Catherine, and all of Captain John's children were part-native.

Captain John had at least two brothers. These were Henry and Frederick. Frederick achieved fame as a lieutenant in Butler's Rangers but was unfortunate to die in 1781 while on a raid into New York. He was married to Elizabeth Young of the Young family that later settled on the Grand River. He had one child, a daughter named Catherine, who married John DeCew. Their house was located near DeCew Falls and was the headquarters of Lt. FitzGibbon before the Battle of Beaver Dams. Elizabeth Young Dochstader later married William Van Every, Butler's Ranger and son of McGregor Van Every, also a Butler's Ranger.

Captain John's older brother Henry is known as Henry of Caistor because he settled in Caistor Township after the Revolutionary War. Henry had a son who was a sergeant in Butler's Rangers. He is the third John Dochstader and is known as Sgt. John. Sgt. John married a Delaware woman named Catherine and also received a grant from the Six Nations but his 1200 acres of land were south of the Grand River in South Cayuga Township. He settled on the land until the War of 1812, when his son was captured and imprisoned in New York State. To be with his son, Sgt. John and his family left Canada and did not return until 1841. In the meantime, his son-in-law, William Fradenburgh, decided to obtain Sgt. John's grant for himself. With support from John Young and others, he was given the land, which was, and still is, known as the Fradenburgh Tract.