Karl Ernst Blass, his wife Maria, and daughter Anna (age 2) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 28 August 1766 aboard the ship Der Junge Heinrich under the command of Skipper Heinrich Niemann.
Widower Karl Erik [sic] Blass, a butcher (Fleischer), and his daughter Maria (age 9) are recorded on an appendix to the 1767 census of Nieder-Monjou in Household No. 118.
Karl Ernst Blass, his wife Maria Elisabeth née Weinurn (widow Wormsbecher), daughter Anna Elisabeth (age 17); and stepsons (Bernhardt [Wormsbecher], age 22; Philipp Herrmann [Wormsbecher], age 21; Christoph [Wormsbecher], age 13) are recorded on the 1776 Katharinenstadt Grundbuch [Land Register] in Household No. 23.
The widow of an unnamed Blass is recorded on the 1798 census of Katharinenstadt in Household No. Ka047.
On the 1798 census of Katharinenstadt, Maria's first husband is recorded as Ernst Wormsbecher, but it is believed that the "Ernst" belongs with her second husband, as the Wormsbecher husband's name was Jakob.
The 1767 census records that Karl Erik [sic] Blass came from the German region of Hessen. The 1776 Katharinenstadt Land Register records that Karl Ernst Blass came from the German village of Westerberg in the Leiningen region and that his wife Maria Elisabeth Wormsbecher Blass née Weinurn came from the village of Friedewald in the region of Hessen.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Blass family among the Volga German colonies.
- 1776 Katharinenstadt Grundbuch [Land Register] (Household No. 23).
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 35.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 889.
- 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): Ka047.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 224.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #7276.
Brent Mai