Johann Sauerwein, a farmer, and his family arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 29 July 1766 aboard the ship Apollo under the command of Skipper Friedrich Detloff Mörenberg.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Kraft on 18 August 1767. Johann died and the surviving family members are recorded on the 1767 census in Household No. 25.
Son Friedrich relocated to the colony of Schwab. In 1788, Friedrich's widow Christina Sauerwein and her children moved from Schwab to Dobrinka.
The 1767 census records that the Sauerwein family came from the German village of Ober Wintersheim in the Darmstadt area.
- 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): Db51, Mv2674.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 400.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #5042.
Brent Mai