Valentin Benzel, a farmer, his wife Anna, and son Jakob (age ¾) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 16 August 1766 aboard a snow-brig named Neptunus (Neptune) under the command of Skipper Johann Graap.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Kautz on 3 August 1767. They are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 17.
In 1790, Ulrich Benzel moved from Kautz to Kolb.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Valentin Benzel came from the German region of Pfalz. The 1767 census records that the Benzels came from the German village of Ensheim in the Pfalz.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 34.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 740.
- Mai, Brent Alan. 1798 Census of the German Colonies along the Volga (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1999): Kz07, Ko05, Mv1247.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 337.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #5923.
Brent Mai