Johann Förster, a farmer, his wife Margaretha, and son Michael (age 2-weeks) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 16 August 1766 aboard a galliot named Die Wachsamkeit (Vigilance) under the command of Skipper Jacob Heinrich Sager.
Johannes Förster, his wife Barbara, and son Georg Michael (age ¼) are recorded on a list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767 along with a note that Johannes Förster died in route.
It is not known in which colony the widow Förster and her son settled.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Förster came from the German region of the Pfalz.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Förster family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 34.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 775.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #6211.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #7648-7650.
Brent Mai