Kessel (Schaffhausen)*
Johann Kessel, a single farmer, arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 12 September 1766 aboard the English frigate Love & Unity under the command of Skipper Thomas Fairfax.
Johann Kessell is recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
Johannes Kessel, a linen weaver (Linenweber), and his [new] wife Margaretha (age 16) are recorded on an appendix to the 1767 census of Nieder-Monjou (No. 10) along with a note that they relocated to the Volga German colony of Schaffhausen in 1768.
This new wife is believed to be Anna Margaretha Batt, daughter of the deceased widow Anna Batt, with whom Johann Kessel had arrived in Oranienbaum and with whom he had been traveling between St. Petersburg and Saratov in 1767.
In 1769, widower Johannes Kessel moved from Näb to Schaffhausen.
The 1767 census records that Johannes Kessel came from the German town of Lübeck.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Kessel family among the Volga German colonies.
- 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): Mv1822.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 207.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766 (Saratov: State Technical University, 2010): #5340, #5557.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #2994, 3015.
Brent Mai