Valentin Bretz, a tailor (Schneider) from Heimersheim in the Mid-Pfalz, & Ottilie Rohner from Vogtstadt near Hamelburg were married on 12 May 1766 in the Lutheran Church of Büdingen.
Valentin Bretz, a farmer, and his wife Ottilia 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 Köhler on 21 August 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 65.
In 1788, Franz Bretz moved from Köhler to Kamenka.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Valentin Bretz came from the German region of Pfalz. The 1767 census records that Valentin Bretz came from the German village of Mannheim.
- 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): Km076, Kl66, Kl73, Mv1312.
- Mai, Brent Alan and Dona Reeves-Marquardt, German Migration to the Russian Volga (1764-1767) (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2003): #632.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 376.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #3783.
Brent Mai