At the time that the Driess family left Leistadt, it was ruled by the Leiningen family. The baptism of Adam Driess is recorded in the Catholic parish records of Leistadt.
Adam Driess, a farmer, his wife Anna Elisabeth, and son Andreas (age 1½) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 21 July 1766 aboard a snow-brig named Mercurius under the command of Skipper Christian Heinrich Abelßen.
He and his wife settled in the Volga German colony of Sewald on 20 August 1767. They are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 38.
In 1792, Johann Michael & Valentin Driess moved from Sewald to Dehler.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Adam Driess came from the German region of Trier.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 32.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 427.
- 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): Dl24, Mv2758.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 175.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #3332.
Darrell Brungardt
Brent Mai