Johannes & Dorothea Kammerzell and four of their children (Elisabeth, Amalia, Johannes, & Valentin) left Gersfeld, southeast of Fulda, and immigrated to Russia. They arrived from Lübeck at the port in Oranienbaum on 14 September 1766 aboard a ship under the command of skipper Reders.
Johannes Kammerzell and his brother Valentin arrived in Frank on 1 September 1767 from Gersfeld, Isenburg, Germany. Their there parents are believed to have died en route to Russia. Johannes & Valentin are recorded on the 1767 Census of Frank in Household No. 112 living with the family of Johann Martin Guttmann. Guttmann was married to their sister Amalia.
Johann Georg (Adam?) Kammerzell and his family (wife: Dorothea; children: Catharina, Dorothea, Susanna, and Johann) immigrated to Russia, also from Gersfeld. They arrived in Oranienbaum on the same ship with the above mentioned Johannes and his family. A daughter, Elisabeth (age 4 weeks), had been born en route. He arrived in Walter on 10 September 1767 along with a new wife Anna Margaretha and the remaining children (Catharina, Susanna, Johannes, & Georg).
These two Kammerzell lines are related and go back for six generations to Heinrich Kemmerzell who died in 1605 in Gersfeld.
Valentin is recorded on the 1798 Census in Frank in Household No. Fk068. His brother Johann is also recorded there, in Household No. Fk103. Johann Georg's widow, Margaretha, is recorded on the 1798 Census in Walter in Household No. Wt086. Daughters Katharina and Susanna are also recorded there, in Households No. Wt005 & Wt030 respectively.
Two Kammerzell families from Walter relocated to Brunnental in 1859 and 1863.
- 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 Gersfeld.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 438.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 317.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): Doc. No. 6413.
- Hein, Maggie, translator. Brunnental, Russia Communion Register (1870-1884) Volume 1 (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2020)