Adam Knopf [sic], a farmer, his wife Agness, and children (Walpurga, age 16½; Nikolaus, age 10½; Franz, age 1¼) arrived from Lübeck via Reval [Estonia] at the port of Oranienbaum on 24 May 1766 aboard a pinque named Лапоминк (Lapomink - a Russian river) under the command of Lieutenant Dmitry Krykov.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Keller on 12 May 1767 where surviving daughter Walpurga is recorded on the 1767 census in Household No. 37 along with the Mathias Hoffmann family. The 1767 census does not record a relationship between the Hoffmann and Knopf [sic] families.
Following the destruction of Keller, the Knauf family resettled to the colony of Neu-Kolonie.
In 1790, Jakob Knauf moved from Neu-Kolonie to Brabander.
In 1790, Elisabeth Knauf, daughter of Johannes Knauf, married Bartel Milster [?] in Seelmann.
In 1791, Anna Elisabeth Knauf, daughter of Johannes Knauf, married someone in the colony of Grimm.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Adam Knopf [sic] came from the German region of Bamberg.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Knauf family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 29.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 90-91.
- 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): Nk53, Mv1878, Mv1879, Mv1881.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 349.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #390.
Brent Mai