Griefenstein*
An article by Wilhelm Funk records the following going to Russia:
Matthias Greiffenstein, a butcher (Fleischhauer) from Aich, son of Joh. Greiffenstein, a farmer (Bauer) in Aich, single Lutheran, & Elisabetha Linert, daughter of Nikolaus Linert, a day laborer (Taglöhner) in Hauddorf [Haundorf] near Christian Erlang, were married on 14 April 1766 in the sacristy of the Lutheran Church in Wöhrd.
Mathias Griefenstein, a farmer, his wife Elisabeth, and their 7-week-old son Adam arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 14 September 1766 aboard the galliot Der Jan under the command of Skipper Markus Dragun.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Lauwe on 5 September 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 41.
The 1767 census records that Mathias Griefenstein came from the German village of Esch near Schönborn.
There are no known surviving male descendants of this family among the Volga German colonies.
- Funk, Wilhelm. "Deutsche a Is russische Colonisten: ausgezogen aus dem Wöhrder Traubuch 1766/67." Blätter für fränkische Familienkunde, 1:3 (1926): 101-107.
- 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): Lw40.
- Mai, Brent Alan and Dona Reeves-Marquardt. German Migration to the Russian Volga (1764-1767) (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2003): #771.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 46.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #5618.
Brent Mai