Andreas Betz, son of Johann Betz & Gertrud Schmitt, was born 16 January 1737 in Buckenhofen and baptized on 17 January 1737 in Forchheim. He married on 6 July 1761 in Forchheim to Anna Katharina Rittler.
Andreas Betz, a baker (Bäcker), his wife Katharina, and daughter Katharina (age 7) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 22 July 1766 aboard the galliot named Der Junge Mattias under the command of Skipper Johann Gottfried Selander.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Dehler on 1 July 1767. Andreas Betz is recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 6 along with his new wife Anna Margaretha and her children Andreas (age 14) and Margaretha (age 11). The surname of the stepchildren is not recorded on the 1767 census.
The 1767 census records that Andreas Betz came from the German village of Forchheim in the region of Bamberg.
- Hubrich, Edgar. Ortsfamilienbuch Forchheim mit Buckenhofen, Burk, Serlbach und Ziegelhütten 1520–1802. Gesellschaft f. Familienforschung in Franken (2016).
- 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): Dl31, Dl32.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 268.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #3363.
Maria Betz-Hermann
Brent Mai