Thomas Schmidt, a farmer, his wife Katharina, and children (Anna, age 16¼; Jakob, age 9; Elisabeth, age 6) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 9 June 1766 aboard an English frigate named Love & Unity under the command of Skipper Thomas Fairfax.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Messer on 18 June 1767. They are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 67.
Both the Oranienbaum passenger list and the 1767 census record that Thomas Schmidt came from the German region of Isenburg.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 29.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 253-254.
- 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): Ms21, Ms23.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 147.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766 (Saratov: State Technical University, 2010): #1820.
Brent Mai