Widow Katharina Knaub and her children (Katharina Friedrika, age 17½; Johann Konrad, age 14; Ludwig, age 12; Johann Heinrich, age 10; Philipp Peter, age 8; Magdalena, age 1½) 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.
On the same ship arriving in Oranienbaum were Valentin Traub and his wife, Eva. Eva died at some point during the journey to the colonies, and Valentin married the widow Katharina Knaub.
Valentin, Katharina, and her three surviving 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.
In 1788, Philipp Peter Knaub moved from Kautz to Balzer.
The 1857 Balzer Census records in Household No. 49 that Friedrich Knaub and his family moved to the colony of Rosenberg in 1853.
Johann Tobias Knaub, son of Philipp Knaub from Kautz, was born 10 November 1889 in Grimm. He died in November 1918 in Sterling, Colorado.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Katharina Knaub came from the German region of Darmstadt. The 1767 census records that Katharina Knaub came from the German village of Grosshausen near Darmstadt.
- 1857 Balzer Census (Household No. 49).
- 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): Bz009, Kz26, Mv1244.
- 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): #3335, #3340.
Brent Mai