Johann Heinrich Breitenstein and his wife arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 9 September 1766 aboard the Russian galliot Strelna under the command of Lieutenant Sornev.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Norka on 15 August 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 121 along with the 13-year-old son of the deceased Heinrich Gedde.
Johann Heinrich Breitenstein and his wife Anna Katharina are recorded on the 1775 census of Norka in Household No. 167 along with the orphan Johann Heinrich Kitz [?]. The 1775 census does not record a relationship between the Breitenstein and Kitz families
Heinrich Breitenstein and his wife Katharina Welge [?] are recorded on the 1798 census of Norka in Household No. Nr175.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Heinrich Breitenstein was a farmer while the 1767 census records that he was a craftsman. Both documents record that he came from the German district of Isenburg.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Breitenstein family among the Volga German colonies.
- 1775 Norka Census (Household No. 167).
- 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): Nr175.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 261.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #4984.
Brent Mai