Johann Dieterich Bickelhaub, son of Johann Heinrich Bickelhaub & Elisabetha Catharina Burger, was born in Gronau (a very small village just east of Bensheim) in Hessen on 6 February 1756. His father died, and his mother remarried on 27 May 1766 in Gronau to Johann Georg Albert, son of Johann Peter Albert & Margaretha Hess. Johann Georg Albert had been born in Gronau on 17 May 1744.
The newlywed couple along with Dieterich Bickelhaub and his sister Sophia (born 10 May 1759 in Gronau) immigrated to Russia and are recorded in Household No. 112 on a list attached to the 1767 Census of Warenburg. The two Bickelhaub children are recorded there in error under the surname Burger - their mother's maiden name. Many of those on this attachment were resettled to the colony of Kind, where Dieterich is recorded on the 1798 Census in Household Kd09, his sister in Household Kd17, and their once again widowed mother in Household Kd18.
The spelling of this surname is also recorded in Gronau and Reichelsheim (where his father was born) as Beckelhaupt and Buckelhaupt. In the United States, the family has also used Pickelhaupt.
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).
Parish records for Gronau (LDS Films No. 1195091 & 1195092).
Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 371.