Heinrich Geist [sic], a farmer, his wife Anna, and daughters (Katharina, age 5;¼ Anna, age ½) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 9 June 1766 aboard an English frigate named Love & Unity under the command of Skipper Thomas Fairfax.
This family is believed to be the same as Johannes Geis, a farmer, his wife Anna Appolonia [Meisinger, daughter of Valentin Meisinger], and step-daughter Katharina [surname not recorded] (age 7) are recorded on the 1767 census of Messer in Household No. 59. They had arrived in Messer on 18 June 1767.
Johann Geis and his family are recorded on the 1798 census of Messer in Household No. Ms69.
Katharina (age 7) is believed to be the sister or perhaps niece of Johann [Heinrich] Geis. Katharina Geis from Messer, wife of Johann Georg Schmidt, and her family are recorded on the 1798 census of Grimm in Household No. Gm021.
Both the Oranienbaum passenger list and the 1767 census record that Johannes Geis came from the German region of Isenburg.
[Geis families from Aulendiebach are recorded along with the Meisinger, Popp, and Grasmück families with whom they traveled to Russia and settled in 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): 245.
- Mai, Brent Alan. 1798 Census of the German Colonies along the Volga: Economy, Population, and Agriculture (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1999): Gm021, Ms69.
- Mai, Brent Alan and Dona Reeves-Marquardt. German Migration to the Russian Volga (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2003): #1260.
- Parish register of Rohrbach, including Aulendiebach (LDS Film No. 1201847).
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 145.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #1753.
Brent Mai