Johann Rauch, a farmer, and his family arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 18 June 1766 aboard the hooker Anna Catharina under the Skipper Adolph Scharpenberg.
The parents and several children died after arrival in Russia. The remaining sons (Gottfried, age 13; Anton, age 11) settled in the Volga German colony of Keller on 12 May 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 22 where they are living with the Bartel Ebers family. The 1767 census does not record a relationship between the Ebers and Rauch families.
Gottfried Rausch [sic] from Keller is recorded on the 1798 census of Hölzel in Household No. Hz15.
The 1834, 1850, and 1857 censuses of Hölzel record the descendants of this family with the surname of Rau.
The Oranienbaum passenger list census records that Johann Rauch came from the German region of the Pfalz.
- 1834 Hölzel Census (Households No. 38, 64, & 70).
- 1850 Hölzel Census (Households 106 & 115).
- 1857 Hölzel Census (Household No. 125).
- 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): Hz15.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 346.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #889.
Brent Mai