Two Reis families arrived in the Volga German colony of Göbel on 20 July 1767. Both of them arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 9 June 1766 aboard an English frigate named Love & Unity under the command of Skipper Thomas Fairfax. Neither the Oranienbaum passenger list nor the 1767 census record the relationship of these two Reis families to each other.
(1) Philipp Reis, his wife Anna, brother George (age 8), and mother-in-law Katharina [surname not recorded] arrived in Oranienbaum.
They are recorded on the 1767 census of Göbel in Household No. 53 along with a note that they relocated to the colony of Semenovka in 1768. Orphan Heinrich Weiz (age 18), son of Johann Weiz, is also recorded in their household. The 1767 census does not record a relationship between the Reis and Weiz families.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Philipp Reis was a cloth cutter (Stoffschneider) while the 1767 census records that he was a craftsman (Handwerker).
(2) Anton Reis, a farmer, his wife Anna, and children (Maria, age 10¼; Anna, age 3) arrived in Oranienbaum.
They are recorded on the 1767 census of Göbel in Household No. 54.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Philipp Reis came from the German region of Mainz. The 1767 census records that both of these Reis families came from the German village of Seligenstadt in the Kurmainz region.
- 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): 227, 231.
- 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): Gb16.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 52, 53.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #1609, #1646.
Brent Mai