Michael Totei [sic], a saddler, his wife Helena, and daughter Dorothea (age 3) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 21 July 1766 aboard a snow-brig named Mercurius under the command of Skipper Christian Heinrich Abelßen.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Urbach on 13 July 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 5. A note in Household No. 50 records that Elisabeth Katharina Herting is living with them.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Michael Totei was a saddler while the 1767 census records that he was a craftsman (Handwerker).
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Michael Totei [sic] came from Hungary. The 1767 census records that Michael Totei [sic] came from the village of Debreczin in Hungary and that his wife Sophia Helena came from the village of Narva in Livland [Estonia].
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 32.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 420.
- 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): Ur07.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 270.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #3265.
Brent Mai