Will (Schwab)
Peter Will from Höchst in the area of Wetterau and widow Gertude Ross [should be Gross] from Schwickertshausen married on 3 May 1766 in Büdingen.
[Johann] Peter Will, his wife Gertrude, [her] children (Johann, age 16; Georg, age 15; Ludwig, age 11; Johann, age 6 [all surname Gross]), and his wife's sister Anna, age 48 [surname not recorded] arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 19 July 1766 aboard the barque named Fortitudo under the command of Skipper John Scott.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Schwab 12 September 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 32.
The sister [recorded as Anna Katharina Will] is recorded in the next Household No. 33 along with Johann Friedrich Uhrich and his wife Anna Barbara.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Peter Will came from the German village of Eckstedt [Höchst]. The 1767 census records that he came from the German village of Eckst [Höchst].
- 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): Sb26, Sb30.
- Mai, Brent Alan and Dona Reeves-Marquardt. German Migration to the Russian Volga (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2003): #611.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 134.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766 (Saratov: State Technical University, 2010): #3729.
Brent Mai