Petry [sic] Klaas, his wife Elisabeth, and sons (Anton, age 7; Johann, age 3) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 22 August 1766 aboard a galliot named Eva Maria under the command of Skipper Franz Christopher Schröder.
Peter Klas [sic], his wife Elisabeth, and son Anton (age 6) are recorded on a list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
Peter Klaas, a farmer, his [new] wife Louisa, and son Anton (age 6) are recorded on a list of Beauregard recruits appended to the 1767 census of the Volga German colonies.
It is not known in which colony they settled.
The 1767 census records that Peter Klaas came from the German village of Naderstelt [Norstedt].
There are no known surviving male lines of this Klaas 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): 851.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 352.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #6905.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #4472-4474.
Brent Mai