Ritz (Laub)*
[Johann] Peter Ritz and his wife Maria arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 18 June 1766 aboard the ship Mann und Frau under the command of Skipper Daniel Berg.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Laub on 12 July 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 23.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Peter Ritz was a farmer while the 1767 census records that he was a blacksmith (Schmied). The 1767 census records that Johann Peter Ritz came from the German village of Loch in the Kurpfalz region.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Ritz family among the Volga German colonies.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 25.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #1090.
Brent Mai