Michael Eiff, a farmer, his wife Katharina, and son Heinrich (age ½) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 2 August 1766 aboard an English frigate named Love & Unity under the command of Skipper Thomas Fairfax.
Michael Eiff, his wife Catharina, and son Heinrich (age 4) are recorded on the list of those being transported from Oranienbaum to Saratov in 1767.
Johann Michael Eiff, a farmer, his wife Katharina, and son Heinrich (age 2) are recorded on a appendix to the 1767 census of Paulskaya.
In 1784, Anna Elisabeth Eiff [presumed daughter of Johann Michael Eiff] married in the colony of Paulskaya. Anna Elisabeth Michel née Eiff from Kind and her family are recorded on the 1798 census of Paulskaya in Household No. Pl07.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Michael Eiff came from the German region of Hessen. The 1767 census records that he came from the German village of Wittenborn in the region of Hessen.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Eiff family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 33.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 674.
- 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): Pl07, Mv1297.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 353.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #5359.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #2937-2939.
Brent Mai
Bill Pickelhaupt