Friedrich Tautfest, a farmer, arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 19 July 1766 aboard a Russian packet-boat named Saratov under the command of Lieutenant Ivan Perepechin.
Along the way, he married Susanna Wetzel, widow of Johann Simon Becker. She did not survive the journey to the colonies. Friedrich settled in the Volga German colony of Dietel on 1 July 1767. He is recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 25 along with his new wife Sybilla and two step-sons from Susanna: Georg Adam Becker (age 10) & Heinrich Adam Becker (age 6).
In 1792, Friedrich Tautfest moved from Dietel to Hussenbach.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Friedrich Tautfest came from the German regioni of the Pfalz. The 1767 census records that he came from the German village of Schornsheim in the Kurpfalz region.
- 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): Dt06, Hs134.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 289.
- Pleve, Igor. List of Colonists to Russia in 1766 "Reports by Ivan Kulberg" (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #2779.
Brent Mai