Valentin Bernhardt, a farmer, his wife Susanna, and daughters (Maria, age 7½; Margaretha, age 6¼; Elisabeth, age 1½) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 31 May 1766 aboard a galliot named Die Vergoldete Weintraube (The Gilded Grape) under the command of Skipper Joachim Hermann Andersen.
They arrived in the Volga German colony of Keller on 12 May 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 39.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Valentin Bernhardt came from the German region of Mainz. The 1767 census records that Valentin Bernhardt came from the German village of Bodenheim in the Kurmainz region.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Bernhardt 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): 132.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 350.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #787.
Brent Mai