Michael Wimmer, a farmer, and his wife [Anna] Barbara arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 22 July 1766 aboard a ship named Der Ringende Jacob (The Wrestling Jacob) under the command of Skipper Johann Heitmann.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Preuss on 16 August 1767. Anna Barbara is recorded on the 1767 census of Preuss in Household No. 115 along with her daughter Anna Barbara (age 1) and a note that Michael Wimmer had died on 4 November 1767. Another note on the 1767 census records that Anna Barbara is engaged to Heinrich Messer.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Michael Wimmer came from the German region of Pfalz. The 1767 census records that Anna Barbara Wimmer came from the German village of Weinheim in the Kurpfalz region.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Wimmer family among the Volga German colonies.
- 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): 530.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 434.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #4142 (p. 269).
Brent Mai