Christian Töpfer, a farmer, his wife Christina, and daughter Katharina (age 2½) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 19 July 1766 aboard a ship named Die Zwei Gebrüder (The Two Brothers) under the command of Skipper Nicolaus Peter Pinck.
Christian Töpfer, his wife Katharina, and daughter Elisabeth (age 2½) are recorded on a list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
Christian Töpfer, a beer brewer (Bierbrauer), his wife Elisabeth, and daughters (Katharina, age 3; Maria, age 6-months) are recorded on the 1767 census of Orlovskaya in Household No. 12. They had settled there on 3 August 1767.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Christian Töpfer came from the German region of Zerbst. The 1767 census records that Christian Töpfer came from the German region of Zerbst.
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): 31.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 545.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 314.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #4233.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #5573-5575.
Brent Mai