Valentin Elheim, a farmer, his wife Anna Maria, and children (Anna Barbara, age 19; Dorothea, age 17¼; Balthasar, age 10; Kunigunda, age 7; Adam, age 5; Christina, age ¾) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 29 July 1766 aboard a ship named Apollo under the command of Skipper Friedrich Detloff Mörenberg.
Orphans Barbara (age 20) and Dorothea (age 18) Elheim, daughters of the deceased Valentin Elheim, are recorded on the 1767 census of Pfeifer in Household No. 52 along with the Joseph Dittmeier family. The 1767 census does not record a relationship between the Elheim and Dittmeier families, but they arrived on the same ship at Oranienbaum.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Valentin Elheim came from the German region of Franken [Franconia]. The 1767 census records that Barbara Elheim came from the German region of Würzburg.
There are no known surviving male lines of this family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 33.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 633.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 390.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766 (Saratov: State Technical University, 2010): #5082.
Brent Mai