Johann Adam Söther from Schwartzerden in the area of Baden & Maria Barbara Paul, daughter of Peter Paul from Gehlweiler were married on 5 June 1766 in the Lutheran Church of Büdingen.
Adam Söder, a farmer, and his wife Maria Barbara along with Adam's brother Jakob, also a farmer, Jacob's wife Katharina, and children (Johann Jakob, age 18; Heinrich Peter, age 11; Maria Elisabeth, age 3) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 29 July 1766 aboard the ship Apollo under the command of Skipper Friedrich Detloff Mörenberg. Jakob and his wife died after arrival in Russia.
Adam Söder, his wife Maria Barbara, and Jakob's surviving children (Jakob, age 18; Heinrich, age 11; Maria Elisabeth, age 4) settled in the Volga German colony of Norka on 15 August 1767. They are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 105.
Adam Seder, his wife Maria Barbara, and children (Johann Adam, age 3; Anna Margaretha, age ½) are recorded on the 1775 census of Norka in Household No. 147 along with his nephew Heinrich Peter Seder (age 16) and niece Maria Elisabeth Seder (age 14).
Johann Jakob Seder, his wife Anna Margaretha [Schnell], and children (Anna Margaretha, age 7; Johann Heinrich, age 4) are recorded on the 1775 census of Norka in Household No. 143 along with stepdaughter Anna Margaretha Müller [daughter of Johannes Müller whose widow must have remarried to Johann Jakob Seder, and then died before 1775].
Both the Oranienbaum passenger list and the 1767 census record that the Söder brothers came from the German district of Isenburg.
- 1775 Norka Census (Households No. 143, 147).
- 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): Nr121, Nr150, Nr154.
- 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): #681.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 257.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #5117, #5118.
Brent Mai