The parish register of Schriesheim records the birth of Hans Velten Traub, son of Andreas Traub & Anna Schlottenhöfer, on 25 July 1734.
Valentin Traub and his wife, Eva, 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.
Eva died at some point along the journey, and Valentin remarried to the widow Katharina Knaub who originally was traveling with 6 children: (1) Katharina Friedrika, age 17½; (2) Johann Konrad, age 14; (3) Ludwig, age 12; (4) Johann Heinrich, age 10; (5) Philipp Peter, age 8; and (6) Magdalena, age 1½.
Valentin, Katharina, and three of the Knaub children (Konrad, Ludwig, & Philipp) settled in the Volga German colony of Kautz on 29 July 1767. They are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 15.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Valentin Traub came from the German region of Pfalz. The 1767 census records that Valentin Traub came from the German village of Schriesheim in the Pfalz.
There do not appear to be any surviving male descendants of this Traub family among the Volga German colonies.
- 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): 428.
- 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): Kz26.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 336.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #3335, #3340.
- Schuhmann, Karl. Familienbuch Schriesheim: 1650-1900 (Schriesheim, Germany: Odenwaldklub Schriesheim, 2004): #10031.
Brent Mai