Johann Kirchturm, a physician, his wife Anna, and children (Norbertus, age 17; Maria, age 7) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 7 May 1766 aboard the galliot named Anna Katharina under the command of Skipper Daniel Heyer. They arrived in Oranienbaum with the Sollbach family that settled in Ober-Monjou.
The Sollbach family is recorded on the 1767 census with an orphaned girl Elisabeth Kirchturm who could be the above mentioned Maria.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Kirchturm came from the German region of Regensburg.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Kirchturm family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 29.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 59.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 290.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #119.
Brent Mai