Two Schmidt families arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 7 August 1766 aboard the ship named Nordstern (North Star) under the command of Skipper Detlev Behling. Their relationship to each other, if any, needs further research.
(1) Christina [Schmidt] (age 12), her mother Christina Elisabeth, and step-father Johann Gottfried Henning arrived in Oranienbaum.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Lauwe on 5 September 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 38 [with step-father's surname translated as Göringen]. Christina is recorded in Lauwe on the 1798 census in Household No. Lw05.
(2) Johann Georg Schmidt, a tailor (Schneider), his wife Christina Sophia, and his stepmother Anna Margaretha arrived in Oranienbaum.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Georg Schmidt came from the German region of Sachsen (Saxony).
There are no known surviving male lines of this Schmidt family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 33.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 660.
- 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): Lw05.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 45.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #5239 (p.336), #5240 (p.336).
Brent Mai