Johann Thomas Herdt, son of Georg Herdt, was born 10 January 1726 in Rinderbügen. Anna Margaretha Wagner, daughter of Thomas Wagner, was born 5 July 1731 in Rinderbügen.
Johann Thomas Herdt & Anna Margaretha Wagner were married on 20 February 1755 in Rinderbügen. Two of their children were baptized in Rinderbügen: (1) Anna Elisabeth, born 17 December 1755; and (2) Johann Heinrich, born 13 December 1758.
Thomas Herdt, a farmer, his wfe Anna, and childen (Anna, age 11: Johann, age 8) 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.
Thomas Herdt, a farmer, his wife Anna Margaretha, and children (Anna Elisabeth, age 13; Johann Heinrich, age 11) are recorded on the 1767 census of Messer in Household No. 78. They had settled in Messer on 18 June 1767.
In 1790, Thomas Herdt and his wife moved from Messer to Franzosen.
Widower Thomas Herdt from Messer is recorded on the 1798 census of Franzosen in Household No. Fz06.
Recruiter Johann Facius records that J. Thomas Herdt (age 40), a reformed colonist, came from Rinderbügen. The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Thomas Herdt came from the German region of Isenburg.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Hardt/Herdt family among the Volga German colonies.
- Decker, Klaus-Peter. Die Auswanderung von 1766/67 aus der Grafschaft Ysenburg-Büdingen nach Russland: 128.
- 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): 249.
- 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): Fz06, Mv1730.
- Parish register of Rinderbügen.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 150.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #1779.
Brent Mai
Maggie Hein