Balthasar Kimmel (sometimes recorded as Kümmel in German records), son of Johann Philipp & Susanna Elisabeth Kimmel, was born on 16 January 1734 in Gelnhausen, northeast of Hanau. He married there on 10 January 1757 to Susanna Maria Schenk, daughter of Johann Heinrich Schenk & Susanna Maria Schneider. Susanna Maria had also been born in Gelnhausen on 27 December 1732. They have three known children, each born in Gelnhausen: (1) Johann Balthasar, born 1 September 1759; (2) Wilhelmine Karoline, born 6 March 1762; and (3) Elisabeth Dorothea, born 19 July 1764.
The Kimmel family immigrated to Russia, arriving from Lübeck in Oranienbaum on 4 July 1766 on board the ship Die Neue Freiheit von Bremen under the command of skipper Steingrawer.
They arrived in Walter on 25 August 1767, and are recorded there on the 1767 Census in Household No. 50, but Karoline is the only child still living at that time.
- Frey, Julius. "Auswanderung aus den Kreisen Gelnhausen und Büdingen im Jahre 1766." Geschichtsblätter für Stadt und Kreis Glenhausen. Herausgeber: Geschichtsverein Gelnhausen, 1965.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 306.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): 146.