Nikolaus Sommer, a cobbler, his wife Johannetta, and children (Elisabeth, age 17; Johann Michael, age 9; Margaretha, age 2½) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 19 July 1766 aboard a pink named Новая Двинка (New Dvinka [a river in Russia]) under the command of Lieutenant Ivan Perepechin.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Rosenheim on 27 June 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 72.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Nikolaus Sommer was a cobbler from Austria while the 1767 census records that he was a farmer from the German village of Zentlof in the Herrschaft von Gleichen.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Sommer family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 31.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 491.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 79.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #3855.
Brent Mai