Johann Philipp Merz, a single farmer, arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 28 July 1766 aboard a Russian galliot named Стрельна (Strelna - a village near St. Petersburg) under the command of Midshipman Login Sornev.
He settled in the Volga German colony of Grimm and is recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 48 along with the [Johann] Heinrich Heppel family. No relationship is recorded between the Heppel and Merz families.
Johann Philipp Mertz is recorded on the 1775 census of Grimm in Household No. 122.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Philipp Merz came from the German region of Darmstadt.
- 1775 Grimm Census (Household No. 122).
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 33.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 620.
- 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): Gm174.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 79.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #4972.
Brent Mai