Ilya Leyrikh has searched the registers of over 40 parishes west and southwest of Leipzig and located one Tobias Leirich, son of Georg Leirich & Rosina Leubig, who was born 1 February 1721 [1722] in the German village of Lausen. The Leirich family in Lausen continues back another 3 generations to Gregor Leirich who was born about 1620 and and died there in 1679.
The parish register of Militärkirche (Military Church) in Ratzeburg records the baptism of a daughter Maria Dorothea who was born to Tobias Leirich in 1759. Tobias Leirich, a meat roaster and native of Leipzig, was granted citizenship in Ratzeburg on 27 February 1761.
The parish register of St. Petri (St. Peter's) Church in Ratzeburg records the baptisms of two sons born to Tobias Leirich: (1) Georg Heinrich Christoph in 1761; and (2) Johann Christian Wilhelm in 1763.
A list of the male residents of Ratzebourg made in February 1762 records Tobias Leirich (No. 149), age 39 and mentions his three sons: Johann Friedrich (age 13), Johann Georg (age 5½), and Jürgen Hinrich (age ¾).
Thomas [sic] Leirich, a farmer, his wife Katharina, and children (Friedrich, age 13; Maria, age 12; Georg, age 10½; Katharina, age 7; Heinrich, age 5; Christian, age 3) 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.
Joh. Thomas [sic] Leirich, his wife Cathar. Margaretha, and children (Friedr. Adolff, age 18; Maria Dorothea, age 12; Georg Wilhelm, age 10½; Magdal. Elisabetha, age 7; Heinr. Christoph, age not recorded) are recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
Thobias Leirich, a farmer, his wife Margaretha, and children (Friedrich, age 18; Dorothea, age 12; Georg, age 10; Katharina, age 7; Heinrich, age 5) are recorded on an appendix to the 1767 census of Nieder-Monjou in Household No. 11.
Maria Dorothea Sutor née Leirich and her family are recorded on the 1776 Katharinenstadt Grundbuch [Land Register] in Household No. 89.
Friedrich Leirich and his family are recorded on the 1798 census of Näb in Household No. Nb21, Heinrich and his family in Household No. Nb22, and Georg and his family in Household No. Nb34.
The 1767 census records that Tobias Leirich came from the German village of Ratzeburg in the region of Sachsen (Saxony). The 1776 Katharinenstadt Land Register records that Maria Dorothea Sutor née Leirich came from the German village of Büdingen in the Isenburg region.
[In German documents, spelling variants for this surname include: Leyrich, Leurich, Lairich, Leirich, and Leirig.]
- 1776 Katharinenstadt Grundbuch [Land Register] (Household No. 89).
- "List of Male Residents [of Ratzebourg], February 1762" (Ratzebourg City Archives, I No. 1019).
- 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): Nb21, Nb22, Nb34.
- Mai, Brent Alan, trans. & ed. Transport of the Volga Germans from Oranienbaum to the Colonies on the Volga: 1766-1767 (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1998): #1151-1157.
- Parish register of Lausen.
- Parish register of Militärkirche in Ratzeburg.
- Parish register of St. Petri Church in Ratzeburg.
- 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: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #5559.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #3022-3028.
- Register of New Citizens of Ratzebourg (Ratzebourg: B. Raute, 1933): 52.
Brent Mai
Ilya Leyrikh