Johann Jacob Rein, son of Johann Jacob & Anna Catharina Rein, was born 6 May 1706 in Mettenheim. He married there on 2 March 1734 to his first wife Anna Catharina Lucius, daughter of Christian Friedrich Lucius. She died there on 5 October 1748 in childbirth. He then married in Mettenheim on 23 January 1749 to Anna Elisabeth Weinbach, daughter of Johannes & Catharina Gertraud Weinbach.
Among their children, the following sons were born there: Johann Jacob (born 13 August 1750) and Johann Melchior (born 16 February 1752).
The parents and these two sons arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 19 July 1766 aboard a Russian packet-boat named Svyatoi Pavel (St. Paul) under the command of the Lieutenant Fyedor Sornev.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Dietel the 1767 Census in Household No. 39 [although the published 1767 census records the surname there as Reis]. By the time that the 1798 Census was taken, both boys and their families had moved to the colony of Merkel. Subsequent generations can also be found in a number of daughter colonies.
- 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): Mr06, Mr10.
- Parish records of Mettenheim (LDS Film No. 1442055).
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 294.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #2693.
Dona Reeves-Marquardt