Johann Semmel, a farmer, his wife Elisabeth, and daughter [Anna] Katharina (age 19) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 19 July 1766 aboard a pinque named Slon (Elephant) under the command of Lieutenant Sergey Panov along with many other families that settled in the Volga German colony of Norka.
Anna Katharina [Semmel] (age 20) is recorded on the 1767 census of Norka in Household No. 8 along with her husband Johannes Hamburger and her mother Elisabeth [Semmel] (age 47). They had arrived in Norka on 15 August 1767.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Semmel came from the German region of Isenburg.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Semmel family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 31.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 508.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 230.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #3998.
Brent Mai