Peter Helbrecht and his family were from Steinbach, east of Giessen. Peter was married to Maria Elisabeth Haas and they had four known children: (1) Johannes (born about 1746); (2) Magdalena (born about 1750); (3) Johann Heinrich (born about 1754); and (4) Johannes (born about 1759). The parents and three younger children immigrated to Russia, arriving from Lübeck at the port in Oranienbaum on 8 August 1766 aboard the galliot Anna Catharina under the command of skipper Johann Joachim Janson.
On the transport from Oranienbaum to the colonies along the Volga River, the father died. The family settled in Bettinger. Widow Helbrecht remarried to Nikolaus Hille, but she has also died by the 1798 Census. Son Johann Helbrecht and his family are recorded on the 1798 census of Bettinger in Household No. Bt17 living with his stepfather.
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).
Mai, Brent Alan, trans. & ed. Transport of the Volga Germans from Oranienbaum to the Colonies on the Volga: 1766-1767 (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1998): 4251-4252.
Müller, Hanno; Ommert, Dora; Schumann, Liesel. Familienbücher des Kirchspiels Kirchberg (v.4): Lollar: 1628-1875 (Fernwald, 2001).
Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 402.
Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): 257.