Johann Mattias Bäcker, a farmer, his wife Henrietta, and children [?] (Wilhelm [Steinmetz], age 24; Maria, age 18) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 11 June 1766 aboard a ship named Der Junge Heinrich (The Young Henry) under the command of Skipper Heinrich Niemann.
Johann Becker is recorded on a list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
Mattias Bäcker (age 30), a farmer, and his wife Henrietta (age 40) are recorded on the 1767 census of Straub in Household No. 42 along with Johann Christoph Heller (age 11) and his sister Maria Katharina Heller (age 14), the orphaned children of Andreas Heller. Also recorded in this household is the single and deaf Wilhelm Steinmetz (age 27). They had arrived in Straub on 12 July 1767. The 1767 census does not record a relationship between the Bäcker, Heller, and Steinmetz families.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Becker came from the German region of Usingen. The 1767 census records that Matthias Bäcker came from the German village of Ketternschwalbach in the Nassau-Usingen area.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Becker 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): 284.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 239.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #2071.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #1701.
Brent Mai