Johann Wolffanger, a rope maker, his wife Maria Elisabeth, daughter Elisabeth (age 12), and [step]daughter Anna Maria [surname not recorded] (age 9) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 16 August 1766 aboard a galliot named Adler (Eagle) under the command of Skipper Paul Adolph Drath.
Johann Wolffanger, his wife Elisabeth, children (Elisabeth, age 12; Johannes, born in route), and [step]daughter Anna Maria [surname not recorded] (age 9) are recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767 along with a note that daughter Elisabeth & son Johannes died in route.
Jakob Wolffanger, a silk weaver? (Spinner), his wife Maria Elisabeth, and stepdaughter Anna Maria [surname not recorded] (age 10) are recorded on the 1767 census of Seelmann in Household No. 50. They had arrived in Seelmann on 5 September 1767.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Wolffanger came from France. The 1767 census records that Jakob Wolffanger came from the German village of Landau in the Alsace region.
There are no known surviving male lines of this 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): 749.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 159.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #5991.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #6358-6362.
Brent Mai