Betz (Messer)
Widower Laurentz Bätz, a linen weaver from Himbach, and Catharina Tugend, daughter of Johannes Tugend, were married in Eckartshausen on 25 January 1719. Their son Johannes Bätz was baptized in Eckartshausen on 14 September 1721.
Johannes married Johanna Maria Bauer from Dudenrod on 6 March 1754. They had two children, both born in Bergheim (now Langen-Bergheim) and baptized in Eckartshausen: (1) Johannes, born 28 May 1755; and (2) Margaretha, born 29 August 1759.
Johann[es], his wife [Joh]anna, and children (Johann, age 12; Anna, age 6) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 4 July 1766 aboard the English frigate Love & Unity under the command of Skipper Thomas Fairfax.
Johannes Betz, a craftsman (Handwerker), and his family settled in the Volga German colony of Messer on 18 June 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 81.
Both the Oranienbaum passenger list and the 1767 census record that Johannes Betz came from the German region of Isenburg.
- Decker, Klaus-Peter. Die Auswanderung von 1766/67 aus der Grafschaft Ysenburg-Büdingen nach Russland.
- 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): Ms33.
- Parish register of Eckartshausen (which includes the villages of Langenbergheim, Wiedesmus, Ronneburg, and Himbach) - LDS Films #1201827 and #1201828.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 150.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #1831.
Maggie Hein
Brent Mai