Johann Michael Thomas, a single cobbler (Schuster), arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 14 June 1766 aboard the ship named Die Neue Fortuna (The New Fortune) under the command of Skipper Ahrens Steingraber.
Johann Michel [sic] Thomas is recorded on a list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
Michael Thomas, a single cobbler (Schuhmacher), is recorded on the 1767 census of Seelmann in Household No. 88. He had settled there on 15 August 1767. The 1767 census records that he left a wife in Germany, and that he married in route to Russia to the daughter of Andreas Mehl who was part of the group being led by Lieutenant Oldenburg.
Both the Oranienbaum passenger list and the 1767 census record that Michael Thomas came from the German region of Bamberg.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Thomas family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 30.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 270.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 165.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #1956.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #1534.
Brent Mai