Johann[es] Schell, a farmer, and his wife Elisabeth arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 19 July 1766 aboard a Russian packet-boat named Saratov under the command of Lieutenant Ivan Perepechin.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Sewald on 20 August 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 15 along with orphan Susanna Hiltenberger (age 8), the surviving daughter of Daniel Hiltenberger. The 1767 census does not record a relationship between the Schell and Hiltenberger families.
In 1792, Johannes Schell moved from Sewald to Dehler. He and his family are recorded on the 1798 census of Dehler in Household No. Dl09.
Following their release from the "Special Settlements" in 1956, several Schell families returned to the Volga German region and settled in the former colony of Franzosen.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Schell came from the German region of Würzburg. The 1767 census records that he came from the German village of Gerfet [?] in the Würzburg region.
- 1834 Sewald Census (Households No. 7, 8, 37, 55).
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 31.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 366.
- 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): Dl09, Sd02, Sd16, Mv2757.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 170.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #2772.
Brent Mai