Johann Adolph Manweiler, son of Hans Manweiler, was baptized 5 August 1703 in Finkenbach-Gersweiler, in the Pfalz (today Rheinland-Palatinate), northwest of Mannheim. He married on 25 April 1726 in nearby Meisenheim to Maria Elisabeth Schliechel. They lived in Breitenheim near Meisenheim and among their children are (all baptized in Meisenheim): Johann Christophel (born 24 Februry 1727), Philipp (born 17 August 1732), Johann Heinrich (born 17 Aug 1740, Johann Adam (born 5 July 1743), and Maria Amelia (born 12 July 1746).
Adolph & his wife along with their children immigrated to Fahlenwerder in Brandenburg in 1747. In Fahlenwerder Adolph was the mayor at one time and the sheriff at another.
Adolph and most of his children left Fahlenwerder and immigrated to Schleswig-Holstein (Denmark) where they settled in Flensburg on 17 May 1762. They left Flensburg on 10 June 1763. Adolph's son Johann Christophel remained in Fahlenwerder.
This family arrived in the colony of Messer on 7 July 1766. Adolph and Maria Elisabeth are recorded there in Household No. 11 in the 1767 Census, son Philipp and his family in Household No. 5, and son Adam and his family in Household No. 9. Daughter Maria Amelia and her husband (Simon Voigt, whom she married in route to Russia in Danzig on 2 June 1765) are recorded in Household No. 14.
The wife of Philipp in Household 5 is Magdalena Maria, age 28. The 1798 Messer Census and the Messer death records record her maiden name as Grabe. She is no doubt the daughter of Johann Georg Grabe another colonist in Fahlenwerder, Brandenburg. Records show Johann Georg Grabe was from Veldenz in Kurpfalz and arrived in Fahlenwerder with a daughter. Magdalena Maria Grabe was born in Veldenz on April 20, 1736, the daughter of Johann Georg Grabe.
There is also a Jacob Manweiler, age 19, recorded in Household No. 12, on the 1767 Census of Messer. Based on his age, he must have been born in Fahlenwerder, Brandenburg.
Descendants of the Adolph Manweiler family are living in Franzosen by the time of the 1798 Census of the Volga German colonies.
- Parish records of Finkenbach-Gersweiler - FHL Film No. 193845.
- Parish records of Meisenheim - FHL Film No. 193979.
- Thode, Ernst. Palantine Migrations to Brandenburg and Pomerania (Penobscot Press, 2009): pages 29, 59, and 60.
- Parish records of Veldenz, on Ancestry.com. Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1500-1971 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.
- Familie Kettel Website, “250 Years Fahlenwerder town history - founding history of the Palatinate settlement”,
- Familie Kettel Website, “List of inhabitants Fahlenwerder 1800 – 1802"
- Eichhorn, Alexander. The immigration of German colonists to Denmark and their subsequent emigration to Russia in the years 1759-1766 (Deiningen, Germany: Steinmeier, 2012): 510-511.
- Mai, Brent Alan and Dona Reeves-Marquardt, German Migration to the Russian Volga (1764-1767) (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2003): 108.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 132-134.
- 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).
