Mathæus Freÿ from Seligenstadt & Sara Schneider were married on 4 March 1766 in the Lutheran Church of Büdingen.
Matthias Frei and his wife Sara 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.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Leichtling on 14 May 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 39.
Mattias Frei and his family are recorded on the 1798 census of Leichtling in Household No. Lg24.
Peter Frei and his brothers Joseph and Johannes, sons of Mattias Frei, are recorded on the 1834 census of Köhler in Household No. 172.
The death of Peter Frei in 1840 is recorded on the 1850 census of Köhler in Household No. 236.
Joseph Frei, son of Mattias Frei, and his family are recorded on the 1857 census of Köhler in Household No. 249 along with a note that they relocated to the daughter colony of Josefstal in 1852.
Joseph Frei and his family are recorded on the 1857 census of Josefstal in Household No. 39.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Matthias Frei was a shipwright while the 1767 census records that he was a farmer.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Mattias Frei came from the German region of Mainz. The 1767 census records that Matthias Frei is from the German village of Seligenstadt in the region of Mainz.
- 1834 Köhler Census (Household No. 172).
- 1850 Köhler Census (Households No. 236, 237, 238).
- 1857 Josefstal Census (Household No. 39).
- 1857 Köhler Census (Households No. 248, 249, 250).
- 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): 164.
- 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): Lg24.
- 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): #365.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 60.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #1050.
Brent Mai