Knauf (Keller)*
Johann Knopf [sic], a farmer, his wife Agness, and children (Walpurga, age 16½; Nikolaus, age 10½; Franz, age 1) arrived from Reval [Estonia] at the port of Oranienbaum on 30 May 1766 aboard the pink Lopamink under the command of Lieutenant Kryukov.
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 Johann 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.
- 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