Johann Schmidt, a farmer, and his wife Anna Dorothea arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 29 July 1766 aboard the ship Apollo under the command of Skipper Friedrich Detloff Mörenberg. They settled in the Volga German colony of Kraft on 18 August 1767 and he is recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 46 along with his new wife Elisabeth [Sternagel]. The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Schmidt came from the German region of Darmstadt while the 1767 census records that he came from the German village of Kirchdorf. [There are not many match points for this Johann Schmidt, but this one arrived in Oranienbaum aboard the same ship as Elisabeth Sternagel.]
- 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): Kf43.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 405.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766 (Saratov: State Technical University, 2010): #5137.
Brent Mai