Johann Konrad Kraft, a farmer, and his wife Katharina arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 19 July 1766 aboard the barque named Fortitudo under the command of Skipper John Scott.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Kraft on 18 August 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 1. Johann Kraft is recorded as the mayor (Vorsteher) of the colony and it is after him that the colony is named.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Konrad Kraft came from the German region of Darmstadt while the 1767 census records that he came from the German village of Alsfeld.
- 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): Kf01, Kf05.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 393.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #3641.
Brent Mai