Berger (Seelmann)*
Johann Stephan Berger, a cobbler (Schuhmacher), his wife Maria, and children (Anna, age 14; Joseph, age ¾) arrived from Reval [Estonia] at the port of Oranienbaum on 30 May 1766 aboard the pink Lopamink under the command of Lieutenant Kryukov.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Seelmann on 24 August 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 44.
Joseph Berger is recorded on the 1798 census of Seelmann in Household No. Sm58.
The 1767 census records that Stephan Berger came from the German village of Grävenstein in the Kurpfalz region. [There is an historic castle Gräfenstein located in the Kurpfalz region. Perhaps this family originated there.]
There are no known surviving male lines of this Berger family among the Volga German colonies.
- 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): Sm58.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 157.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766 (Saratov: State Technical University, 2010): #350.
Brent Mai