Valentin Bauer and his wife Maria Ottila Engel were married on 12 May 1750 according to the Sankt Alban parish records. They had three children, Johann Andreas, Johann Peter, and Johannes, all recorded in the Sankt Alban parish records, before immigrating to Russia. Andreas died before the family immigrated, and both Maria and Peter died during the trip to the colony.
Valentin Bauer, a farmer, his wife Maria, and sons (Peter, age 12; Johann, age 10¼) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 9 June 1766 aboard a ship named Die Perle under the command of Skipper Gerhardt Hermann Thomsen.
Widower Valentin Bauer and his son Johannes (age 1) are recorded on the 1767 census of Kolb in Household No. 8. They had settled in Kolb on 13 May 1767.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Valentin Bauer came from the German region of Pfalz. The 1767 census records that he came from the German village of Falkenstein.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 29.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 158.
- 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): Ko11.
- Parish register of Sankt Alban (LDS Film #193160)
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 387.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #994.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #0408.
Maggie Hein
Brent Mai