There are two Ehrfurt families that settled in the Volga German colony of Orlovskaya on 7 June 1767. They had arrived together from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 4 July 1766 aboard the English frigate Love & Unity under the command of Skipper Thomas Fairfax.Their relationship to each other, if any, needs further research.
(1) Karl Erfurt, a farmer, his wife Eleonora, and son Ludwig (age ¼) arrived in Oranienbaum.
Carl Erffurt [sic] and his wife Eleonora are recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
Karl Gottfried Ehrfurt, a farmer, and his family are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 8.
In 1776, Karl Gottfried Ehrfurt and his wife moved from Orlovskaya to Moscow.
(2) Widow Katharina Ehrfurt and her children (Heinrich, age 21; Maria, age 19) arrived in Oranienbaum.
Widow Catharina Maria Erfurt and her children (Gottfried, age 21; Christiana Mari., age 19) are recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767 along with a note that mother Catharina Maria died en route.
Heinrich Gottfried Erfurt is recorded on the 1767 census in Household No. 86.
The death of Heinrich Ehrfurt in 1833 is recorded on the 1834 census of Orlovskaya in Household No. 17.
Both the Oranienbaum passenger list and the 1767 census record that these Ehrfurt families came from the German village of Köthen.
- 1834 Orlovskaya Census (Household No. 17, 18, 29, 79, 125, 126, 149).
- 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): Or12, Mv2135.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 313, 329.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #1242, #1249.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #0497-0498, #0507-0509.
Brent Mai