Johann[es] Messler, a single weaver (Weber), arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 16 May 1766 aboard the Russian galliot named Katharina Eleonora under the command of Skipper Peter Rehder.
He settled in the Volga German colony of Leichtling on 14 May 1767 and is recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 20 along with his new wife Anna Maria Gramm and her son Hans Peter [Elsebach] (age 2½).
In 1852, Feit Messler and his family relocated from Leichtling to Marienfeld. They are recorded on the 1857 census of Marienfeld.
Both the Oranienbaum passenger list and the 1767 census record that Johann[es] Messler came from the German region of Wartenberg [?].
- 1857 Leichtling Census (Households No. 22, 23).
- 1857 Marienfeld Census.
- 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): 79.
- 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): Lg13, Lg21.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 55.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #273.
Brent Mai