Rudolph Lerch, a farmer, his wife Susanna, and sons (Peter, age 14; Jakob, age 5) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 16 August 1766 aboard a galliot named Adler (Eagle) under the command of Skipper Paul Adolph Drath.
Rudolph Lerch is recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
Rudolph Lerch, a farmer, and his [new] wife Elisabeth, widow of Johann Nikolaus, is recorded on the 1767 census of Schäfer in Household No. 53. They had arrived in Schäfer on 30 August 1767.
Both the Oranienbaum passenger list and the 1767 census record that Rudolph Lerch came from the German region of Zweibrücken.
There are no known surviving male lines of this 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): 753.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 103.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766 (Saratov: State Technical University, 2010): #6029.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #7310.
Brent Mai