Jakob Keil, a farmer, his wife Katharina, children (Franz, age 17; Katharina, age 12), and [step-]son Johann [Weisbeck] (age 7) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 18 July 1766 aboard a Russian packet-boat named Svyataya Ekaterina (St. Catherine) under the command of Midshipman Alexander Trusov.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Dietel on 1 July 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 22.
The 1767 census records that Johann Michael Weissbeck came from the German village of Mater in the Kurpfalz region.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Weissbeck family among the Volga German colonies.
- 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): 333.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 288.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #2471.
Brent Mai