Gottfried Hoffmann, a farmer, his wife Barbara, and sons (Philipp, age 8; Michael, age 5½) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 11 June 1766 aboard the snow-brig named Der Jäger under the command of Skipper Gabriel Will.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Seelmann on 15 July 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 30.
In 1795, Anton Hoffmann moved from Seelmann to Brabander.
The 1767 census records that Gottfried Hoffmann came from the German village of Pekach in the Würzburg.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 30.
- 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): Bn40, Sm03, Sm16, Mv2721.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 155.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #2149.
Brent Mai