Kaspar [sic] Blum, a farmer, his wife Klara, and son Johann [Thomas] (age 5) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 4 July 1766 aboard the English frigate Love & Unity under the command of Skipper Thomas Fairfax.
Xaverius Blum, his wfe Clara, and son Thomas (age 5) are recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767 along with a note that Clara died en route.
Xaverius Blum, a beer brewer (Bierbrauer), his [new] wife Barbara, and son Thomas (age 5) are recorded on the 1767 census of Orlovskaya in Household No. 78. They had settled there on 7 June 1767.
In 1786, Thomas Blum and his wife moved from Orlovskaya to Moscow.
Xaverius Blum and his family are recorded on the 1798 census of Orlovskaya in Household No. Or24.
The death of Christian Blum in 1829 is recorded on the 1834 census of Orlovskaya in Household No. 122.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Kaspar Blum came from the German region of Bayern (Bavaria). The 1767 census records that Xaverius Blum came from the German village of Mindelheim.
There are no known surviving male descendants of this Blum family among the Volga German colonies.
- 1834 Orlovskaya Census (Household No. 122).
- 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): Or24, Mv2163.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 328.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #1397.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #1384-1386.
Brent Mai