Johann Adam Köhler, a farmer, his wife Gertruda, and children (Magdalena, age 9; Johann Wilhelm, age 5; Johann Peter, age 3) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 28 July 1766 aboard a Russian galliot named Стрельна (Strelna - a village near St. Petersburg) under the command of Midshipman Login Sornev.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Huck on 17 August 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 87.
In 1790, Johann Wilhelm Keller moved from Huck to Norka.
Wilhelm Köhler and his family are recorded on the 1798 census of Norka in Household No. Nr202.
Both the Oranienbaum passenger list and the 1767 census record that Johann Adam Köhler came from the German region of Isenburg.
- 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): 619.
- 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): Nr202, Mv0967.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 161.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #4964.
Brent Mai