Johann Jakob Urbach, a farmer, his wife Anna Katharina, and children (Christina, age 7; Johann Christian, age 4; Anna Elisabeth, age 2) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 21 July 1766 aboard a snow-brig named Mercurius under the command of Skipper Christian Heinrich Abelßen.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Urbach on 13 July 1767. They are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 1 as the colony's mayor (Vorsteher). The colony was named after him.
In 1786, Christian Urbach and his family moved from Urbach to Stahl am Karaman.
Both the Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Jakob Urbach he 1767 census records that the Urbach family came from the German village of Mühlhausen.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 32.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 422-423.
- 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): Sk40, Mv2899.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 269.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #3295.
Brent Mai