Johannes Keller, a farmer, his wife Anna, and children (Mauritius, age 11; Margaretha, age 7; Barbara, age 5) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 9 June 1766 aboard the 2-masted merchant ship named Anna Katharina under the command of Skipper Adolph Scharpenberg.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Keller on 12 May 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 1. He is recorded there as the mayor (Vorsteher) of the colony and it is after him that the colony was named.
The 1767 census records that Johannes Keller came from the German village of Günsbach [believed to be Gimbsbach] in the Kurpfalz region.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Keller family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 29.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 139.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 341.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #836.
Brent Mai