Valentin Benzel, a farmer, and his family arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 13 September 1766 aboard a ship under the command of Skipper Johann Grapp.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Kautz on 3 August 1767. They are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 17.
In 1790, Ulrich Benzel moved from Kautz to Kolb.
The 1767 census records that the Benzels came from the German village of Ensheim in the Pfalz.
- Mai, Brent Alan. 1798 Census of the German Colonies along the Volga (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1999): Kz07, Ko05, Mv1247.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 337.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #5923.
Brent Mai