Hoffmann (Walter)
Nicolaus Hoffman, son of Caspar Hoffman & Magdalena Burkart, was born 13 February 1723 in Gersfeld. Elisabetha Richter, daughter of Hans Richter & Margaretha Klüber, was born 24 November 1723 in Gersfeld.
Nicolaus and Elisabetha married there on 9 February 1751. The births of 6 of their children are recorded in the parish registers of Gersfeld: (1) Dorothea, born 17 October 1752; (2) Johannes, born 1 May 1755; (3) Johannes [again], born 2 May 1757; (4) Margaretha, born 26 March 1759; (5) Anna Eva, born 10 July 1761; and (6) Eva, born 24 September 1764.
Nikolaus Hoffmann, his wife Elisabeth, and children (Dorothea, age 16; Johann, age 12; Johannes, age 10; Margaretha, age 8; Anna, age 6; and Eva, age 2) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 14 September 1766 aboard a ship under the command of skipper Reders.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Walter on 25 August 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 18.
Both the passenger list in Oranienbaum and the 1767 census record that this family came from the German village of Gersfeld [mis-translated as Herschfeld on some translations].
- 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): Wt008, Wt091.
- Parish records of Gersfeld (via Archion.de).
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 299.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #6526.
Maggie Hein
Brent Mai