Elias Rübsamen was born about 1742 in Grünberg, 20 kilometers east of Giessen, in Hessen. He married Anna Elisabetha Humbert, also from Grünberg, on 7 April 1766 in Büdingen, Hesse, on their way to Russia.
They departed from the port of Lübeck along with his sister Anna, by the ship Die Fortuna with the skipper Peter Stahl, arriving in Oranienbaum, Russia, on 4 July 1766.
Elias and his wife settled in the Volga German colony of Stahl am Karaman on 10 June 1767 and are are recorded there on the 1767 Census living in Household No. 25. Their descendants are still living in Stahl am Karaman at the 1798 Census, recorded in Household No. Sk28.
- 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).
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Nordost-Institut, 2008): 197.
- Pleve, Igor. List of Colonists to Russia in 1766 "Reports by Ivan Kulberg" (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): 158.