Johann Wiedecker [sic], his wife Anna, and children (Lorenz, age 6; Anna, age 3) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 11 June 1766 aboard the snow-brig named Der Jäger under the command of Skipper Gabriel Will.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Laub on 12 July 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 18 along with his new wife Philippina.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Wiedecker [sic] was a lace maker from Kollmar. The 1767 census records that Johann Wiederkehr [sic] was a farmer from the German village of Appenrod in the Darmstadt region.
Some subsequent generations use the surname spelling of Wiederkeer.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 30.
- 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): Lb36, Lb56.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 24.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #2196.
Brent Mai