Johann Wiedecker [sic], his wife Anna, and children (Lorenz, age 6; Anna, age 3) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 4 July 1766 aboard the ship Der Jager under the command of Skipper Gabriel Wild.
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.
- 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