Johann Ludwig Koch was born about 1730 in Friedensdorf. He married on 24 March 1753 in Buchenau to Elisabeth Göbel, daughter of Heinrich Göbel, who was born about 1725. They have four known children, each baptized in Buchenau: (1) Anna, baptized 12 November 1753 & died 15 May 1754; (2) Gertraud, baptized 21 May 1755; (3) Anna Elisabetha, baptized 4 August 1758, and (4) Hans Heinrich, baptized 31 May 1762.
The Koch family immigrated to Russia, arriving from Lübeck on 12 September 1766 at the port in Oranienbaum aboard the English frigate Love and Unity with skipper Thomas Fairfax at the helm. The trip was hard on this family as the mother and the two youngest children died before reaching the colonies along the Volga River.
Widower Ludwig and daughter Gertraud arrived in Katharinenstadt on 3 August 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 Census in Household No. 36.
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): 1382.
Westmeier, Anneliese. Familienbuch Buchenau/Lahn mit Filial Emmelshausen.
Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 330.
Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): 340.