Gelroth
Lorentz Gelruth [sic] (age 37), a miller (Müller), is recorded on a list of colonists dated 23 September 1765 who were gathering in the town of Worms. He had arrived in Worms on 2 September 1765.
Lorenz Gelroth, a miller (Müller), his wife Maria Barbara, and daughter Gertrude (age 1½) are recorded on the 1767 census of Bauer in Household No. 21. They had arrived in Bauer on 20 July 1766.
Early transliterations of this surname used the spelling of Hellroth, but this appears to have been a mistake. The original surname was Gelroth. Some descendants of this family use the spelling of Gelrod.
The 1765 Worms list records that Lorentz Gelruth [sic] came from Christianstadt [Kristianstad]. The 1767 census records that Lorenz Gelroth came from the Swedish region of Tolarn. Perhaps this refers to the Swedish region of Dalarna.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Einige Kapitel aus der Geschichte des Kolonisationsprojects von Katharina II, 1763-1775 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2021): 126 (#321).
- 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): Br23.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 121.
Brent Mai