Johann Billing [sic], a linen weaver (Leineweber), his wife Maria, and [step-]son Gottlieb [surname not recorded] (age 14) arrived from Danzig at the port of Oranienbaum on 19 May 1766 aboard a galliot named Гданьская Надежда (Gdansk Hope) under the command of Skipper Johann Erdmann Geske.
Heinrich Billinger (age 54), a craftsman (Handwerker), his wife Maria, and stepson Martin Gottlieb [surname not recorded] (age 16) are recorded on the 1767 census of Reinwald in Household No. 18. They had arrived in Reinwald on 14 July 1766.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Billing [sic] came from the German region of Berlin. The 1767 census records that Heinrich Billinger came from the German village of Königsberg in Prussia.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Billinger family among the Volga German colonies.
- 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): 84.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 34.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #329.
Brent Mai