Friedrich Witzel [sic], a single butcher (Jäger), 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 along with his servant Johann Sauer (age 20). [See Sauer Family.]
Widower Johann Gottfried Wenzel, a craftsman (Handwerker), is recorded on the 1767 census of Stahl am Karaman in Household No. 18. He had settled there on 10 June 1767.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Friedrich Witzel [sic] came from the German village of Lausnitz [?]. The 1767 census records that Johann Gottfried Wenzel came from the German village of Langensalza in the region of Sachsen (Saxony).
There are no known surviving male lines of this Wenzel 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): 235.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 195.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #1675.
Brent Mai