Johann Peter Steinmetz, son of Johann Georg Steinmetz & Anna Barbara Gödel of Wörsbach, was baptized on 6 May 1723 in Heimkirchen, a village directly north of Kaiserslautern in what today is the German state of Rheinland-Pfalz [Wörsbach is just to the southwest of Heimkirchen]. Johann Peter married in Heimkirchen on 14 January 1744 to Anna Elisabeth Deno, daughter of Balthasar Deno & Appolonia Buhl. She had also been baptized in Heimkirchen on 1 October 1730.
This new Steinmetz family had 5 children, each born and baptized in Heimkirchen: (1) Johannes, born 8 September 1751, baptized 12 September 1751; (2) Anna Elisabeth, born 26 September 1756, baptized 3 October 1756; (3) Maria Christina, born 25 March 1759, baptized 1 April 1759, died 6 May 1760; (4) Maria Barbara, born 28 March 1761, baptized 5 April 1761; and (5) Dorothea Juliana, born & baptized 12 December 1763.
Peter Steinmetz, a farmer, his wife Anna Elisabeth, and children (Johann, age 16; Anna Elisabeth, age 10¼; Brigitta Barbara, age 8; Dorothea, age 2½) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 21 July 1766 aboard a snow-brig named Mercurius under the command of Skipper Christian Heinrich Abelßen.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Dietel on 1 July 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 Census in Household No. 5.
The Steinmetz children are still living in Dietel in 1798, recorded there on the 1798 Census in Households No. Dt14, Dt15, Dt16, Dt56, and Dt69.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Peter Steinmetz came from the German region of Pfalz.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 32.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 429.
- Mai, Brent Alan. 1798 Census of the German Colonies along the Volga: Economy, Population, and Agriculture (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1999): Dt14, Dt69.
- Parish records of Heimkirchen (LDS Film No. 193884).
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767, Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 281.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #3344.
Dona Reeves-Marquardt
Brent Mai