Ritter (Balzer)*
Johann Conrad Ritter, son of Jacob & Maria Magdalena Ritter, was baptized on 9 November 1717 in Ladenburg. He married there on 30 July 1754 to Elisabeth Zeissel. She was born in 1719 and died on 1 March 1758 in Ladenburg. He remarried in Ladenburg on 27 June 1758 to Margaretha Kriegbaum, daughter of Adam & Anna Catharina Kriegbaum. She had been born in Elmshausen on 17 May 1727.
The baptism of one daughter to Johann Conrad Ritter & Margaretha Kriegbaum has been located in the parish register of Ladenburg: Eva Elisabeth, baptized 20 June 1756.
The Ritter family immigrated first to Denmark (Schleswig-Holstein). The baptism of an additional daughter Anna Jacobina on 14 September 1760 is recorded in the parish register of Thorning [Denmark].
They departed for Russia in 1765. They settled in the Volga German colony of Balzer on 26 April 1766. Konrad, a cobbler, is recorded there as a widower on the 1767 census in Household No. 18.
There are no known surviving male lines of this family among the Volga German colonies.
- Eichhorn, Alexander, Jacob & Mary Eichhorn. The Immigration of German Colonists to Denmark and Their Subsequent Emigration to Russia in the Years 1759-1766 (Deiningen, Germany: Drukerei und Verlag Steinmeier GmbH & Co. Kg, 2012): B-1352.
- Lang, Gerhard. German Colonists of Denmark on the Volga.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 76.
Gerhard Lang
Wayne Bonner
Brent Mai