Johann Heinrich Geis, a farmer, his wife Susanna, and children (Johann, age 15; Eleonora, age 9; Karl, age 5; Konrad, age 3; Nikolaus, age 1¼) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 22 July 1766 aboard a barque named Der Junge Mattias (The Young Mattias) under the command of Skipper Johann Gottfried Selander.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Bangert on 1 July 1767. Heinrich Geis died and his widow Susanna remarried to Johannes Reber. They are recorded on the 1767 census of Bangert in Household No. 14 along with Reber's surviving sons.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Heinrich Geis came from the German region of Nassau while the 1767 census records that his sons came from the German region of Freiburg.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Geis 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): 438.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 109.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #3407.
Brent Mai