Gottfried Witzenhausen, a single farmer, arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 22 July 1766 aboard a ship named Der Ringende Jacob (The Wrestling Jacob) under the command of Skipper Johann Heitmann.
He settled in the Volga German colony of Stahl am Tarlyk on 13 August 1767 and is recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 11 along with his new wife Maria Dorothea.
The baptismal record of Gottfried's son August Heinrich on 17 January 1768 indicates that the family was living in the colony of Dinkel [Ober-Hollstein] at the time.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Gottfried Witzenhausen came from the German region of Mülhausen. The 1767 census records that Gottfried Witzenhausen came from the German village of Brunstadt in the region of Mülhausen.
There do not appear to be any surviving male descendants of this family living 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): 531.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 207.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #4150 (p. 270).
Brent Mai
Baptismal record of August Heinrich Witzenhausen, son of Gottfried Witzenhausen in Ober-Hollstein [Dinkel], on 17 January 1768 in the colony of Schilling, across the Volga River from Dinkel. The child had been born on 15 January 1768 in Ober-Hollstein.
Source: Ilya Mauter.