Christian Rau, a farmer, and his wife Anna Maria arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 28 July 1766 aboard a Russian pink named Vologda [an historic Russian city] under the command of Lieutenant Sergey Bartenyev.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Krasnoyar on 20 July 1767 where Christian Rau is recorded on the 1767 census in Household No. 25 along with his new wife Julianna [widow of Nikolaus Schröder] and her son Johann Konrad [Schröder] (age 5).
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Christian Rau came from the German region of Darmstadt. The 1767 census records that he came from the German village of Alsfeld in the Darmstadt region.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Rau 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): 608.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 420.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #4872.
Brent Mai