Jakob Keil, a farmer, his wife Katharina, children (Franz, age 17; Katharina, age 12), and [step-]son Johann [Weisbeck] (age 7) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 18 July 1766 aboard a Russian packet-boat named Svyataya Ekaterina (St. Catherine) under the command of Midshipman Alexander Trusov.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Dietel on 1 July 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 22.
Son Johann Christian Keil was born in Dietel on 13 December 1769. The movement tables of the 1798 census record that this Christian Keil left Dietel in 1790. However, documents in Sarepta record that he arrived there in 1787.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Jakob Keil came from the German region of Pfalz. The 1767 census records that Jakob Keil came from the German village of Dordecken in the Kurpfalz region.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Keil family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 31.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 333.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 288.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #2471.
Brent Mai
Karl Becker