Melchior Winter, a farmer, his wife Margaretha, and children (Katharina, age 21, Anna, age 7; Johann, age 5¼) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 16 August 1766 aboard a galliot named Die Wachsamkeit (Vigilance) under the command of Skipper Jacob Heinrich Sager.
Melchior Winter,his wife Helena, and children (Katharina, age 21; Anna Maria, age 7, and [Johann] Michael, age 5) are recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
It's not certain whether Margaretha recorded on the Oranienbaum passenger list and Helena recorded on the Transport List are the same person.
Melchior and daughter Anna settled in the Volga German colony of Lauwe on 5 September 1767. They are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 23 along with Melchior's [new] wife Elisabeth and her children [surname not recorded] (Katharina, age 9; Johann Philipp, age 5).
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Melchior Winter came from the German region of Schwaben (Swabia) while the 1767 census records that he came from the German village of Eschach [?] near Olenburg [?].
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 34.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 767.
- Mai, Brent Alan. Transport of the Volga Germans from Oranienbaum to the Colonies on the Volga, 1766-1767 (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1998).
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 42.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #6134.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #7224-7228.
Brent Mai