Ernst Wilhelm Urbach, son of Carl & Anna Catharina Urbach, was baptized in Büdingen on 9 November 1732. He married there on 18 July 1754 to Catharina Elisabetha Ropplebein(?), daughter of Wolff Heinrich Ropplebein(?). They had four children who were baptized in Büdingen: (1) Maximilian, 11 November 1754; (2) Willhelmina, 23 October 1757; (3) Johann Philipp, 21 March 1762; and (4) Johanna Magdalena, 25 August 1765.
Ernst Wilhelm, Catharina Elisabetha, Johann Philipp, and Willhelmina arrived from Lübeck at the port in Oranienbaum on 10 August 1766 aboard the Russian pink Vologda under the command of Lieutenant Sergey Bartenyev.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Norka on 15 August 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 31 (where the name has been mistranslated as “Burbach”).
- 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): Nr044.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 237.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #4863.
Maggie Hein