Adam Friedrich Kratzke, a musical instrument maker (Musikinstrumentenbauer), his wife Hedwig Katharina, and children (Heinrich Adam, age 14; Peter Nikolaus, age 11; Katharina [Mar]Gretha, age 9; Anna Dorothea, age 5; Katharina, age 2) are recorded on the 1767 census of Kratzke in Household No.1. They had arrived in Kratzke on 7 August 1766. He is recorded there as the mayor (Vorsteher) of the colony at that time, and is the person after whom the colony was named.
At some point, he moved to the neighboring colony of Dietel.
Widower Adam Kratzke (age 75) from Dietel is recorded on the 1798 census of Katharinenstadt in Household No. Ka084 along with his daughter Anna Dorothea Windemuth née Kratzke and her family.
The 1767 census records that Adam Friedrich Kratzke came from the German village of Ueckermünde in Prussian Pomerania,
There are no known surviving male lines of this Kratzke family among the Volga German colonies.
- Mai, Brent Alan. 1798 Census of the German Colonies along the Volga (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1999): Ka084.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 449.
Brent Mai