Kaspar Kraft, a single brewer (Bierbrauer), settled in the Volga German colony of Katharinenstadt on 27 August 1766. He is recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 234.
Kaspar Kraft (age 30), a farmer, his wife Elisabeth née Otto (age 27), daughter Johanna Judith (born 13 January 1776), step-son Johann Konrad Hipp (age 17), and sister-in-law: Rosina Otto (age 19) are recorded on the 1776 Katharinenstadt Grundbuch [Land Register] in Household No. 115 along with a note that step-son Johann Konrad Hipp died in 1783.
Widow Anna Maria Marx married Kaspar Kraft in Katherinenstadt, and took son Philipp and daughters Maria Katharina and Anna Maria with her. Anna Maria, widow of Kaspar Kraft, is recorded on the 1798 census of Katharinenstadt in Household No. Ka112 along with Johanna Judith Kraft, the daughter of Kaspar Kraft by his first wife.
Both the 1767 census and the 1776 Katharinenstadt Land Register record that Kaspar Kraft came from the German village of Aufhaussen in the Küssel region and that his wife was born in Thelbey, Nördlingen.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Kraft family among the Volga German colonies.
- 1776 Katharinenstadt Grundbuch [Land Register] (Household No. 115).
- Mai, Brent Alan. 1798 Census of the German Colonies along the Volga (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1999): Ka112, Mv1786.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 323.
Brent Mai