Johann Heinrich Gentz, a carpenter (Zimmermann), his wife Anna Maria, and children (Johann Heinrich, age 12; Johann Peter, age 7; Lorenz, age 5; Katharina, age ½) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 28 July 1766 aboard a Russian galliot named Стрельна (Strelna - a village near St. Petersburg) under the command of Midshipman Login Sornev.
Surviving son Heinrich Gedde [sic] (age 13) is recorded on the 1767 census of Norka in Household No. 121 along with the Heinrich Breitenstein family. They had arrived in Norka on 15 August 1767. The 1767 census does not record a relationship between the Gentz and Breitenstein families.
Recorded on the 1775 census of Norka in Household No. 167 are Heinrich Breitenstein, his wife Anna Katharina, and orphan Johann Heinrich Kitz [?] (age 19). This Johann Heinrich Kitz is assumed to be the same child recorded in 1767 as Heinrich Gedde [sic].
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Heinrich Gentz came from the German region of Isenburg.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Gentz family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 33.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 620.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 261.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #4968.
Brent Mai