Widow Margaretha Ruhl [sic] arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 11 June 1766 aboard a galliot named Der Junge Mattias (The Young Mattias) under the command of Skipper David Wohlert along with son Wilhelm (age 20) and two additional children (Konrad [Nafts], age 18; Margaretha [Kraus], age 17).
Margaretha Kraus, 18-year-old orphan of Heinrich Kraus, settled in the Volga German colony of Dönhof and is recorded there on the 1767 census in household No. 76 along with widow Margaretha Reil, her son Wilhelm, and orphan Konrad Nafts. The 1767 census does not record a relationship among the Reil, Nafts, and Kraus families.
The 1767 census records that Margaretha Kraus came from the German village of Gelnhausen.
There are no known surviving male descendants of this Kraus family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 30.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 259.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 362.
Brent Mai