Gottfried Hoffmann, a farmer, and his family arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 4 July 1766 aboard the ship Der Jager under the command of Skipper Gabriel Wild.
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.
- 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