Johann Adam Mertz, his wife Margaretha, and children (Margaretha, age 13; Elisabeth, age 11; Georg, age 8; Johann, age 5¼; Hans, age 3) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 22 August 1766 aboard a galliot named Eva Maria under the command of Skipper Franz Christopher Schröder.
Johann Adam Mertz, his wife Margaretha, and children (Margaretha, age 13; Elisabeth, age 11; George, age 8; Johann, age 5¼; Hans, age 3) are recorded on a list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767 along with a note that all of them died en route except for daughter Elisabeth.
Orphan Elisabeth Mertz has not been located on a 1767 census of the Volga German colonies. However, Elisabeth Idt née Mertz (age 40) is recorded on the 1798 census of Krasnoyar in Household No. 71. This may be the same Elisabeth Mertz, daughter of Johann Adam Mertz, who survived the journey from Germany to the Volga German colonies.
The Oranienbaum passenger list does not record from where Johann Adam Mertz came.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Mertz family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 34.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 844-845.
- 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): Ks071.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #6838.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #4730-4736.
Brent Mai