Peter Schäfer, a miller, his wife Elisabeth, and son Nikolaus (age 5½) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 31 May 1766 aboard a galliot named Die Vergoldete Weintraube (The Gilded Grape) under the command of Skipper Joachim Hermann Andersen.
Nikolaus Schäfer (age 7) is recorded on the 1767 census of Dehler in Household No. 34 along with his mother Elisabeth and stepfather Christian Hermann. His father had died in route to Saratov in a group led by Oberlieutenant Oldenburg. They had arrived in Dehler on 26 June 1767.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Peter Schäfer came from the German region of Trier. The 1767 census does not record from where Nikolaus Schäfer came.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Schäfer family among the Volga German colonies.
- 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): 132.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 274.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #786.
Brent Mai