Just Kessler, a farmer, and his wife Maria arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 19 July 1766 aboard a ship named Die Zwei Gebrüder (The Two Brothers) under the command of Skipper Nicolaus Peter Pinck.
Justus Kessler and his wife Margaretha are recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Ober-Monjou on 3 August 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 55 along with their 6-month-old son Stephan.
In 1788, Stephan Kessler moved from Ober-Monjou to Wittmann. By 1798, he was living in Luzern.
The 1798 census of Schönchen records that Anton Kessler from Ober-Monjou is working in Katharinenstadt.
The death of Anton Kessler in 1827 is recorded on the 1834 census of Mariental in Household No. 65.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Just Kessler came from the German region of Nassau. The 1767 census records that Just Kessler came from the German village of Neukirch in the region of Nassau.
- 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): 543.
- 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): Lz14, Om73, Sn46, Mv2084.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 302.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #4216.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #5765-5766.
Brent Mai