Widower Jakob Pfeifer, a farmer, and his sons Jakob (age 19) and Bassel (age 17) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 11 June 1766 aboard the snow-brig named Der Jäger under the command of Skipper Gabriel Will along with Mauritius Pfeifer, a farmer, and his wife Dorothea.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Seelmann on 15 July 1767 and son Jakob Pfeifer and his new wife are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 32.
The 1767 census records that the Pfeifer family came from the German village of Wiersdorf in the Kurmainz region. There is not a Wiersdorf located in an area that was part of the Electorate of Mainz (German: Kurmainz). There is a village called Wiersdorf in a region that was part of the Electorate of Trier (German: Kurtrier) that is today in Kreis Bitburg-Prüm, a district from which a number of Volga German families came.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Pfeifer family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 30.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 155.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #2157, #2158.
Brent Mai
Pre-Volga Origin
Volga Colonies
Immigration Locations
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