There are two Brauchbacher [sic] families that arrived together from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 18 July 1766 aboard a Russian packet-boat named Svyataya Ekaterina (St. Catherine) under the command of Midshipman Alexander Trusov. They both settled in the Volga German colony of Dietel on 1 July 1767. Their relationship to each other is not recorded.
(1) Wendel Brauchbacher [sic] and his wife Margaretha arrived in Oranienbaum. They are recorded on the 1767 census of Dietel in Household No. 19 along with orphan Anna Margaretha Foos (age 9), daughter of the deceased Jakob Foos. A relationship between the Brauchbacher and Foos families is not recorded on the 1767 census.
Wendel Bruchbach [sic] and his wife are recorded on the 1798 census of Dietel in Household No. Dt35.
The death of Wendel Bruchbach in 1805 is recorded on the 1811 census of Dietel in Household No. 35.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Wendel Brauchbacher was a farmer while the 1767 census records that he was a miller (Müller).
(2) Jakob Brauchbacher [sic], his wife Margaretha, and daughters (Margaretha, age 4; Katharina, age 1½) arrived in Oranienbaum and are recorded on the 1767 census of Dietel in Household No. 20.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Jakob Brauchbacher [erroneously recorded as Burbach] was a farmer while the 1767 census records that he was a miller (Müller).
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that both Brauchbacher families came from the German region of Pfalz. The 1767 census records that both of them came from the German village of Oslog in the Kurpfalz region.
There are no known surviving male lines of this family among the Volga German colonies.
- 1811 Dietel Census (Household No. 35).
- 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): Dt35.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 287.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #2465, #2466.
Brent Mai