Johann Grats [sic], a farmer, his wife Anna, and daughters (Anna, age 7; Christina, age 6; Maria, age 5¼) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 24 July 1766 aboard a barque named George under the command of Skipper Adam Bairnsfair.
Johann Gruss [sic], his wife Anna, and daughters (Anna, age 8; Christina, age 7; Maria, age 5) are recorded on a list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
Widower Wihelm Grau, a leatherworker (Lederarbeiter), and his daughters (Christina, age 8; Katharina, age 7; Gertrude, age 5) are recorded on an appendix to the 1767 census of Beauregard in Household No. 46.
In 1772, Wilhelm Grau and his family left Boisroux.
Another entry records that in 1783, Wilhelm Grau and his wife left Boisroux for Orenburg and never returned.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Grau came from the German region of Bergen. The 1767 census records that Wilhelm Grau came from the German village of Arsalen [?].
There are no known surviving male lines of this Grau family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 33.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 570.
- 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): Mv0276, Mv0299.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 205.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #4505.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #4503-4507.
Brent Mai
Heinrich Reichert