Ludwig Gerk [sic], a farmer, and his wife Sophia 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.
Ludwig Erb, a farmer, his wife Sophia, and foster daughter (Pflegetochter) Barbara (age 16) [surname not recorded] are recorded on the 1767 census of Seelmann in Household No. 40. They had settled there on 24 August 1767.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Ludwig Gerk [sic] came from the German region of Bamberg. The 1767 census records that Ludwig Erb came from the German village of Höfen in the Bamberg region.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Erb 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): 397.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 157.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #3045.
Brent Mai