Johann Nikolaus Bechthold, a farmer, his wife Anna Katharina, and daughter Anna Maria (age 4) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 16 August 1766 aboard a galliot named Frau Diederika (Lady Diederika) under the command of Skipper Johann Joachim Lunau.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Hussenbach where Nikolaus is recorded on the 1798 census in Household No. Hs015.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Nikolaus Bechthold came from the German region of Darmstadt.
- 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): 758.
- 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): Hs015, Hs105.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #6062.
Brent Mai