Ernst Elias Happe, a laborer (Fabrikarbeiter), his wife Anna, and daughter Maria (age 6) are recorded on the 1767 census of Katharinenstadt in Household No. 50. They had settled there on 27 August 1766.
Johann Ernst Elias Happe, his wife Eva Elisabeth née Eichholn [Eichhorn?] (widow Meier), and stepsons (Johann Christoph [Meier], age 23; Johann Heinrich [Meier], age 15) are recorded on the 1776 Katharinenstadt Grundbuch [Land Register] in Household No. 62 along with a note that [step-]son Christoph Meier married on 15 November [1776] in Heddiger's Inn to Maria Dorothea Dariesch[?]. The Land Register (in Household No. 37) also records that Elias Happe remarried in 1779 to Anna Maria née Paul (widow Heidecker) and that she died in 1782. [See Heidecker Family.]
The 1767 census records that Ernst Elias Happe came from the German village of Eisenach in the Thüringen region. The 1776 Katharinenstadt Grundbuch [Land Register] records that he came from Eisenach in the Thüringen region and Eva Elisabeth née Eichholn [Eichhorn?] came from the German village of Wilsheim.
There are no known surviving male lines of this family among the Volga German colonies.
- 1776 Katharinenstadt Grundbuch [Land Register] (Households No. 37, 62).
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 287.
Brent Mai