Jakob Birkenholz, a farmer, his wife Anna, and children (Magdalena, age 9; Jonas, age 6) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 9 June 1766 aboard an English frigate named Love & Unity under the command of Skipper Thomas Fairfax.
Johann Jakob Berkus, a farmer, his wife Anna Maria, and children (Maria Magdalena, age 12; Urias, age 8) are recorded on the 1767 census of Göbel in Household No. 67. They had settled there on 20 June 1767.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Jakob Birkenholz came from the German region of Freiburg. The 1767 census records that Johann Jakob Berkus [sic] came from the Austrian village of Kage [?].
There are no known surviving male lines of this Birkenholz family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 29.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 250-251.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 56.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #1793.
Brent Mai