Johann Meiser [sic], a farmer, his wife Margaretha, and children (Anna, age 8; Johann, age 6; Elisabeth, age 2¼) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 22 August 1766 aboard a galliot named Die Vergoldete Weintraube (The Guilded Grape) under the command of Skipper Joachim Hermann Andersen.
The three children arrived in the Volga German colony of Norka on 2 September 1767:
(1) Anna Dorothea Messer (age 10) is recorded on the 1767 census of Norka in Household No. 202 with the Georg Popp family.
(2) Johann Just Messer (age 8) is recorded on the 1767 census of Norka in Household No. 199 with the Georg Deis family. He is also recorded in Household No. 194, but this is believed to be a duplicate entry.
In 1792, Just Messer moved from Norka to Balzer.
Just Messer from Norka and his family are recorded on the 1798 census of Balzer in Household No. Bz068.
Johann Georg Messer, son of Just Messer, and his family are recorded on the 1834 census of Balzer in Household No. 192.
Georg Messer and his family are recorded on the 1857 census of Balzer in Household No. 199.
Descendants of this line moved to Neu-Balzer.
(3) Elisabeth Messer (age 5) is recorded on the 1767 census of Norka in Household No. 194 with the Georg Bauer family. Georg Bauer is recorded as her step-father, but his wife at the time (Anna Margaretha, age 24) is not old enough to be the mother of the Messer siblings.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Meiser [sic] came from the German region of Isenburg.
- 1834 Balzer Census (Household No. 192).
- 1857 Balzer Census (Household No. 199).
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 34.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 825.
- 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): Bz068, Mv1976.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 281, 283, 284.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #6608.
Brent Mai