Johann Jakob Schott

Family #68 in the 1767 Grimm census.

Family #143 in the 1775 Grimm census.

Family #32 in the 1798 Grimm census.

Family #44 in the 1834 Grimm census.

Johann Jakob Schott was the son of Johannes Schott and Margaretha Meuerer Schott of Holzgerlingen, Neckarkreis, Wuerttemberg, born 03 June 1739. He was one of 10 children, the middle child and second to the youngest boy.

Johann Jacob Schott

  • Event Date 1644 – 1747
  • Event Date 1739
  • Gender Male
  • Birth Date 03 Jun 1739
  • Birth Year 1739
  • Christening Date 04 Jun 1739
  • Christening Place Evangelisch, Holzgerlingen, Neckarkreis, Wuerttemberg
  • Father’s Name Johannes Schott
  • Mother’s Name Margaretha

Baptism Record

  • Name: Johann Jacob Schott
  • Event Type: Taufe (Baptism)
  • Birth Date: 3 Jun 1739
  • Baptism Date: 4 Jun 1739
  • Baptism Place: Holzgerlingen, Württemberg, Deutschland (Germany)
  • Father: Johannes Schott
  • Mother: Margaretha Schott
  • Page Number: 246;247
  • Author: Evangelische Kirche Holzgerlingen (OA. Böblingen)
  • City or District: Holzgerlingen

The birth year 1739 is a close match with the estimated birth year based on his age given to the census taker in 1775. His age is listed as 35, giving him a birth year of about 1740.

I can find no German marriage records for Johann Jacob and Anna Margaretha Becker, which probably means the two didn’t marry until they were in Russia. There is a marriage record found in German Migration to the Russian Volga (1764-1767 that shows a Jacob Schott married Anna Maria Spengler 08 April 1766 in Buedingen, Germany. (See page 63, #495, Jacob Schott.) This may or may not be the same Johann Jacob Schott, since there were numerous Schotts named Jacob who immigrated to Russia. See the discussion about this marriage record in the AHSGR Origins Project section below.

The Johann Jakob Schott of this profile immigrated from Germany to Russia and immediately settled in Grimm. He is listed in the 1767, 1775, and 1798 Grimm censuses.

According to the 1767 Grimm census, Jakob Schott was originally Catholic, a craftsman from Mehlis. He listed with his wife, Margaretha, age 22, and son Johann Konrad Andreas, who was one month old. I looked up the town of Mehlis, and it no longer exists under that name. The closest version of that was Zelle-Mehlis, a town in the Schmalkalden-Meiningen, in Thuringia, Germany, about 124 miles northeast of Frankfurt.

The 1775 Grimm census shows Schott and his wife, Anna Margaretha Becker as follows:

  • Jakob Schott, husband, age 35, birth year around 1740
  • Margaretha Schott, wife, age 28, birth year around 1747
  • Andreas Schott, son, age 8, birth year around 1767
  • Johann Philip Schott, son, age 3.5, birth year around 1771

The 1798 census shows the family entry (#32) like this:

  • Jakob Schott, husband, age 59, birth year around 1739
  • Anna Margareta Becker, wife, age 51, birth year around 1747
  • Johann Phillip Schott, son, age 27, birth year around 1771
  • Maria Elizabeta Hess, wife of Johann Phillip Schott, age 28, birth year around 1770
  • Maria Elizabeta Schott, daughter of Johann Phillip Schott, age 1, born about 1797
  • Johannes Schott, son, age 20, born around 1778
  • Johann Heinrich Schott, son, age 14, born around 1784
  • Anna Margareta Schott, daughter, age 18, born around 1780

His son Andreas was listed in a separate family, #39, with him as the head of the household:

  • Andreas Schott, husband, age 30, born around 1768
  • Christina Bender, wife, age 30, born around 1768
  • Johann Jakob Schott, son, age 8, born around 1790
  • Johann Phillip Schott, son, age 3, born around 1795
  • Johann Michael Schott, age 1/2, born around 1798

Immigration Resources

The Kulberg Reports

There is a Jacob Schott and family listed in the Kulberg Reports, page 131, Document #1796. His wife’s name was Anna, which also matches with this Johann Jacob Schott and wife Anna Spengler. The children and their ages don’t exactly match up with those in the 1775 Grimm census, but that is not surprising since so many people, including children and infants, perished along the journey to the Volga Region. This entry reads:

  • Jacob Schott, Lutheran farmer from Stolberg, doc. No. 1796, wife: Anna, children: Johann, 4, Anna Maria, 11, Anna, 1.

Stolberg is not a match for Wuerttemberg or Hesse, the birth places for the Johann Jakob Schott and Anna Spengler noted above. There are no vital records for a Johann Jakob Schott being born in Stolberg between 1728 and 1732. If this record refers to the same Johann Jakob Schott in this profile, the city of Stolberg was a place he moved to at some point after his birth.

This could also be a match to this Johann Jakob Schott and his wife, Anna Margaretha Becker, but there are several potential problems.

  • The family does not appear on the Volga German Transport List. They should be listed there, even if they perished before they reached their final destination. The most likely explanation is that their name was misspelled. I checked all the names listed as started with the letters Sch but didn’t find a match.
  • None of the children in the Kulberg Reports appear in the Grimm census. It could still be the same family, as that which was mentioned in the Kulberg Reports, but then some of their children did not survive. Again, this was not unusual as the journey to the Volga region was extremely difficult and many people died.
  • The full name of wife Anna is not confirmed anywhere in the Kulberg Reports. Unless we can find birth records for those three children in Germany and they actually list their mother’s full name, we may never be able to confirm if the Anna of the Kulberg Reports is Anna Maria Spengler of the Buedingen marriage records (see discussion below) or Anna Margaretha Becker of the Grimm census records.

Some settlers arrived earlier than 1767 and settled in another village before finally relocating to Grimm, but its not clear where those names are listed and where the travel is documented.
The Emigration from Germany to Russia in the Years 1763 to 1862

According to Karl Stumpp’s book, it says there were two Schotts who immigrated to the Volga region of Russia:

  • Johann Peter Schott, from Kirchbracht/Gelnhausen, Hesse, who married Margareta Scheller from Niederseeman/Buedingen in Buedingen
  • Jakob Schott, who married his wife Anna Maria Spengler in 1766 in Buedingen

This is probably not a complete list of Schotts who immigrated to Russia, as there are several others mentioned in other sources.

The first one, Johann Peter Schott, can be eliminated as a match because clearly his name is different from the Johann Jakob Schott of this profile.

The second one is a possible match.

I checked online resources for German vital records. The only birth record I could find for an Anna Maria Spengler anywhere in Hesse is:

  • Name Anna Maria Spengler
  • Gender Female
  • Christening Date 17 Oct 1729
  • Christening Place Sankt Ignaz, Mainz, Rheinhessen, Hessen
  • Father’s Name Georgii Udalrici Spengler
  • Mother’s Name Annae Mariae

When I expanded the search to all of Germany, there were only a few more possibile matches, but most of them were Catholic. Although an inter-faith marriage is always possible, it probably rules them out since this Schott family was Lutheran.

Update: I just discovered the family was originally Catholic. (See Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet 1764-1767, Band 2, Heerstellung: Mecke Druck and Verlag, 37115 Duderstandt; Published 1999; page 81:

68. Jakob Schott 25, Catholic craftsman from Mehlis. [Zelle-Mehlis?]; Wife: Margaretha, 22; Son: Johann Konrad Andreas, 1 month old.

If Stumpp’s second reference is in fact the Johann Jakob Shott of this profile, then he was married at least twice:

  • First wife: Anna Maria Spengler, born 1729
  • Second wife: Anna Margaretha Becker, born 1748

According to Grimm census records, the Johann Jakob Schott of this profile was born around 1740, so that means that Anna Maria Spengler, born in 1729, would have been 11 years older than her husband. That was not unusual during that time in history.

In fact, it’s possible that Spengler was married at least once before, making Schott her second husband. She may have had children from a first husband, too, children that Schott took responsibility for after their marriage. This makes sense when you consider that Schott would have been only 16 years old at the time daughter Anna Maria was born in 1756, as detailed in the Kulberg Report. Although that’s physicially possible, the reality is that she may not have been his biological daughter.

If this Johann Jakob Schott and Anna Maria Spengler were in fact the Schott couple that eventually lived in Grimm, then:

  • It confirms that Schott was married at least twice, since the two women had different names, Anna Maria Spengler and Anna Margaretha Becker.
  • It rules out Anna Margaretha Becker, born in 1748, as the mother of Schott’s eldest child, Anna Maria, who was born in 1756. Anna Margaretha would have been only 8 at the time of Anna Maria’s birth, highly unlikely if even possible.

The marriage of Schott and Becker is confirmed using Grimm census records, and the marriage record from Buedingen appears to give proof of Schott and Spengler’s marriage.

AHSGR Origins Project

If Spengler and Schott were married before arriving in Russia, their union ended shortly after their arrival. Anna Maria may have died, which is entirely plausible. However, the AHSGR Origins Project suggests that the two may have divorced and remarried, although it’s not said in so many words.

First they mention a Schott living in Galka:

“SchottFN{J.Jacob}: said by the Galka FSL #47 to be fromUC Mittelsinn?[sic], Stolberg[?]. Using LDS Film 1201682 Dick Kraus proved his March 1753 Mittel-Seemen [Stolberg-Gedern County] parish marriage to Schmidt {A.Catharina} which indicates that his father {L.Henrich} was from Ober-Seemen. The births of Jacob and Catharina’s children are recorded in Mittel-Seemen parish as follows: A. Maria in Feb 1756, A. Catharina in May 1759, J. Caspar in May 1762, and A. Catharina in July 1765. For 1798 see Mai1798:Gm27.”

For those not familiar with the Volga German census records, there are two colonies being discussed above: Galka and Grimm. The bulk of the paragraph appears to refer to a Jakob Schott from Galka, in the 1775 census in family #47. The last sentence, in bold, implies that for details about this same man in 1798, see the Grimm census, family #27.

Someone is trying to say that Johann Jakob Schott in Galka FSL #47 is the same person as the Johann Jakob Schott listed in the Kulberg Report, and that the Johann Jakob Schott who immigrated to Grimm is the same man. This is wrong, minimally with regard to the Jakob Schott who settled in Grimm. Additionally, if the Johann Jakob Schott from Galka is the Johann Jakob Schott from Stolberg, then the Kulberg record referenced above has nothing to do with the Johann Jakob Schott from Grimm.

  • The Schott who lived in Grimm appeared in the 1767, 1775 and 1798 Grimm censuses. He cannot also be listed in the Galka 1767 census or any later Galka censuses. This alone proves that the Galka Jakob Schott and the Grimm Jakob Schott were different people.
  • If the Galka Schott and the Kulberg Schott were the same person, then Mrs. Schott went by two names: Anna and Catharina. While the Anna in the Kulberg Reports may have been named Anna Catharina, she would have likely used the same name in official documents, and not switched back and forth between them, especially regarding birth records for her children.
  • The children listed in in Dick Kraus’s research using LDS Film 1201682 are completely different from the children listed in the Kulberg Reports. And their birth years overlap, making it highly unlikely that these are the same families.
  • Mrs. Schott in Dick Kraus’s research was Anna Catharina Schmidt. In the Kulberg Reports, she was Anna Maria Spengler. In the Grimm census records, she was Anna Margaretha Becker. These are three different women.
  • At the end of that entry, it says: “see Mai1798:Gm27. ” (GM27 means the 1798 Grimm census, family #27.) Household #27 is that of Gottlieb Schultz and his wife Anna Maria Schott from Galka. Initially it appear they were saying Anna Maria Spengler Schott had married Mr. Schultz, but it soon became evident that their ages were off by about 25 years. The Anna Maria Schott in the 1798 Grimm census was born in 1755, and Anna Maria Spengler was born in 1729. This Anna Maria Schott was instead the daughter of one of the Johann Jakob Schotts. She could have been one of Jakob and Catharina Schott’s daughters, of Galka, completely unrelated to the Johann Jakob Schott who had lived in Grimm since 1767. She could have also been the Anna Maria Schott listed in the Kulberg Reports, whose mother was Anna Maria Spengler Schott.

This brings up another problem regarding Johann Jakob Shott and Anna Maria Spengler. If they were married in Büdingen shortly before immigrating to Russia, what was the status of the children who traveled with them to Russia? They are listed as if they are the couple’s biological children. We’ve already established that the eldest daughter, Anna Maria, probably was not Schott’s biological child. Would they have had two biological children out of wedlock? That was not unheard of, but having two children years before they married seems unusual. Were both children Schott’s step-children? Or was this a different Jacob and Anna Schott?

More curious is what happened to Anna Maria Spengler Schott after she arrived in the Volga region. It’s very possible that she died either on the journey or shortly after her arrival in Grimm. The trip was notoriously perilous and many people died before reaching their final destination. This was not unusual and in fact very probable.

If Spengler’s daughter ended up in Galka, however, and her father or step-father lived in Grimm, why didn’t she stay with him in Grimm? How did she get to Galka? If Spengler’s daughter was born in 1755, she would have been 12 at the time the family arrived in the Volga region of Russia. That was probably too young an age for a girl to go off on her own and live with another family in a village far away from where one’s biological father was located. So if in fact she was Spengler’s daughter, that seems to imply that her mother, Anna Maria Spengler, was still living and she lived in Galka with said daughter.

If Anna Maria Spengler was still living after 1767, then she and her husband Johann Jakob Schott must have divorced. While divorce was not common amongst Volga Germans, there are several documented cases of it in the Volga German colonies. If the couple divorced either in Oranienbaum prior to the journey to Grimm or immediately after arriving in Grimm, that would have given Schott enough time to marry Anna Margaretha Becker and allow her to give birth to son Andreas by 1768, the birth year attributed to him in the 1775 census.

If Anna Maria Schott was the daughter of the other Johann Jakob Schott and his wife Anna Catharina, the couple in Galka, then none of this matters. It was a coincidence that she ended up in Grimm in 1798 where the Johann Jakob Schott of this profile was living and they were not related. This makes that comment, see Mai1798:Gm27 very misleading. Only one Schott daughter moved from Galka to Grimm, and she would have been completely unrelated to the Schott family already living there. This Schott daughter was the widow of Christian Zisch of Galka, and one of their children, Johann Dietrich Zisch, lived with his mother and her second husband Gottfried Schultz at the time of the 1798 Grimm census.

The second mention of the Schotts in AHSGR’s Origins Project refers to a Jakob Schott, Grimm FSL #68, from Mehlis. It goes on to say:

“The Büdingen ML says that a man with this man’s name married 8 April 1766 Spengler{A.Maria} (Mai&Marquardt#495)”

This appears to reference Anna Maria Spengler, although it does not address the possibility of her being previously married to someone else and of there being any children involved, either from her former husband or her new husband.

I researched the town name of Mehlis and can find nothing but Zella-Mehlis which is currently in Thuringia, although it used to be in Hesse. That matches what is known about Volga Germans in Hesse being targeted for immigration to Russia, but there is no information about a Johann Jacob Schott being born there. Additional church birth records from that town need to be reviewed.

One of the sources I checked was a collection of German vital records, which kept using the word Schotten along with the surname Schott. Since surnames are often based on a location, I looked Schotten up on a map. It turns out it is town in the middle of Hesse. It seems likely that people with the surname Schott must have been from Schotten or had an ancestor who was at some point from that town. Research on Schotten continues.

What is most important to note is that both these Johann Jakob Schotts were not from Wuerttemberg, the place we originally thought he was born, although Johann Jakob Schott could have been born there, and then he or his parents could have moved to another town after some time after his birth.

The final mention is both affirming and confusing:

” [T]his may be the marriage of a different Schott, since in the 1798 census, this Schott’s wife’s maiden name is given as Becker. KS158 says he was going to Boisroux.”

Yes, it confirms that the Grimm Schott was married to a woman named Becker, who clearly isn’t Spengler. In fact, The Grimm Johann Jakob Schott was listed as being married to Anna Margaretha Becker in each of the three censuses in the late 1700s. But he could still be the person who married Spengler first in Germany, and Becker second in Russia. In that case, he and Spengler divorced around the same time they arrived in Grimm, or Spengler died prior to 1767 and he remarried.

The confusing part is, KS158 says he was going to Boisroux. The mention of a completely different village throws a wrench in everything. The only thing that is clear is that whoever was going to Boisroux was a different person, or Schott, from the one in Grimm.

I looked up the Boisroux 1798 census to see if I could find any Schotts there, and there were none. Interestingly, however, there were several Spenglers listed, and it looks like they were all related to David Spengler, family #Bx51, born in 1740. In the 1767 Boisroux census, it says he was a farmer from Dessau. His wife, Maria, was 26, and they had a son, Christian, age 2. He was of an age where he could have been a younger sibling or nephew of Anna Maria Spengler. Is it a coincidence that his surname is the same as the possible first wife of this Johann Jacob Schott, or are Anna Maria Spengler and David Spengler related?

Research on this family continues.

Sources

  • “Deutschland Geburten und Taufen, 1558-1898,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VH3X-PHH : 28 November 2014), Johannes Schott in entry for Johann Jacob Schott, 04 Jun 1739; citing ; FHL microfilm 1,055,754.
  • Ancestry.com. Württemberg, Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1500-1985 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016. Original data: Lutherische Kirchenbücher, 1500-1985. Various sources.
  • The 1775 and 1798 Census of the German Colony on the Volga, Lesnoy Karamysh, also known as Grimm; Published by the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA; Published date: 1995; famiily #143 in the 1775 census, Jakob Schott, age 35; family #32 in the 1798 census, Jakob Schott, age 59.
  • 1834 Census of Grimm in the District of Saratov, Russia, dated 2 February 1835; Translated by Brent Mai, Concordia University, Portland, Oregon; Published by Dynasty Publishing, Beaverton, OR, USA; Published 2011; page 14, family #44, line 440, Jakob Schott, age 76 in 1816, deceased 1824.
  • Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet 1764-1767, Bands 1, 3 and 4; Published by Alfred Eisfeld with Cooperation from Sabine Eichwald, Nordost-Institute in Goettingen, 2005; pages 146 and 157 in Band 3.
  • Eichhorn, Dr. Alexander, Dr. Jacob and Mary Eichhorn. The Immigration of German Colonists to Denmark and Their Subsequent Emigration to Russia in the Years 1759-1766; Bonn, Germany and Midland Michigan, USA; Drukerei und Verlag Steinmeier GmbH & Co. Kg, Deiningen, Germany, 2012; page 409, family 427.
  • Pleve, Igor, Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766, “Reports by Ivan Kulberg,” Ministry of Education and Science of Russian Federation, Saratov State Technical University; Published in Saratov, Russia, 2010; page 131, Jacob Schott, Lutheran, farmer from Stolberg, document number 1796, wife Anna, children: Joahnn, age 4, Anna Maria, age 11, and Anna, age 1.
  • Brester, Alexander, vital information, photos, and other information from German families living in Beryozovka, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia
  • Stump, Karl. The Emigration from Germany to Russia in the Years 1763 to 1862; the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia; Published in Lincoln Nebraska; Third Printing 1993.
  • Beratz, Gottlieb. The German Colonies on the Lower Volga, Their Origin and Early Development; Lincoln, Nebraska: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, Translation Copyright and Printing 1991; Originally published as Die deutschen Kolonien an de unteren Wolga in ihrer Entstehung und ersten Entwickelung in Saratov, Russia in 1915 and reprinted in Berlin Germany in 1923.
  • Kloberdanz, Timothy L., The Volga Germans in Old Russia and in Western North America: Their Changing World View, the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, Lincoln, NE, USA; Second printing 1997; First printing in Anthropological Quarterly, October 1975, Volume 48, Number 4.
  • Ancestry.com. Württemberg, Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1500-1985 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016. Original data: Lutherische Kirchenbücher, 1500-1985. Various sources. See: http://ancstry.me/2sodbOw.
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