Joseph Heimbichner, a single man, arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 19 July 1766 aboard the galliot named Elisabeth Catharina under the command of Skipper Heinrich Ludwig Gottknecht.
He settled in the Volga German colony of Laub on 25 September 1767 and is recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 50 along with his [new] wife Maria Elisabeth and her children Maria Elisabeth & Fritz Antor.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Joseph Heimbichner was a farmer from the German village of Bassenheim. The 1767 census records that he was a furrier (Kürschner) from the German village of Hof in the Bayreuth region.
[Dr. Plehve's translation of the Oranienbaum passenger list records this surname as Gerwelheim.]
There are no known surviving male lines of this family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 32.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 396.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 32.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766 (Saratov: State Technical University, 2010): #3034.
Brent Mai