Johann Besel, a farmer, his wife Anna, and children (Johann, age 16; Anna, age 10¼; Martin, age 8; Immanuel, age 5; Katharina, age 3) arrived from Danzig at the port of Oranienbaum on 29 April 1766 aboard a two-masted merchant ship named Der Kleine Andreas (The Little Andrew) under the command of Skipper Jacob Jensen.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Hussenbach and are recorded there on the 1798 census in Household No. Hs041.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Besel came from Poland.
- 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): 47.
- 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): Hs041, Hs084, Hs126.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #11.
Brent Mai