On 14 October 1750 Johann Heinrich Horst married Anna Elisabetha Wagner, daughter of Albrecht Wagner, in the Evangelische Kirche of Wächtersbach, about 20 kilometers northeast of Hanau. They had four children born in Wächtersbach: (1) Johann Heinrich, born 11 July 1751; (2) Johann Friedrich, born 21 September 1755; (3) Catharina Margaretha, born 27 November 1757; and (4) Johann Wilhelm, born 8 June 1760.
The Horst family immigrated to Russia, arriving from Lübeck at the port in Oranienbaum on 8 August 1766. The parents died at some point before the 1767 Census. The four children appear as orphans in the colony of Huck in 1767: Wilhelm and Katharina in Household No. 74 and Johann Heinrich and Johann Friedrich in Household No. 29.
By the 1775 census, Johann Heinrich and Johann Friedrich are living in Norka . Heinrich is recorded there on the 1798 Census in Household No. Nr032 and Friedrich is recorded in Schilling in Household No. Sh077. Descendants of Johann Heinrich moved on to the colonies of Frank and Kolb .
- 1775 Census of Norka.
- 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 of Wächtersbach (Archion Database).
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 147 & 158.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): 210.
