Kraft (Walter & Yagodnaya Polyana)*
There are two Kraft women from the German village of Storndorf who immigrated to the Volga German colonies:
(1) The parish register of Büdingen, where families were gathering to immigrate to Russia, record the marriage on 15 June 1766 of "Johannes Homburg from Gelnhaar & Juliana Krafft from Storndorff [sic]." They settled in the Volga German colony of Walter on 10 September 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 89.
(2) Johann Peter Beefuß and Anna Elisabetha Kraft were married on 25 January 1753 in Storndorf. After Peter Befus died, Anna Elisabeth remarried to Johann Konrad Ruhl. They settled in the Volga German colony of Yagodnaya Polyana on 16 September 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 52.
The relationship of these two women to each other, if any, needs further research.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Kraft family among the Volga German colonies.
- Mai, Brent Alan. 1798 Census of the German Colonies along the Volga (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1999): Wt031.
- Mai, Brent Alan & Dona Reeves-Marquardt. German Migration to the Russian Volga (1764-1767): Origins and Destinations (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2003): #695.
- Parish register of Büdingen.
- Parish register of Storndorf.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 187.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 315.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #6093, #6101.
Brent Mai