Melchior Kretzinger, a farmer, and his mother Anna arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 16 May 1766 aboard the Russian galliot named Katharina Eleonora under the command of Skipper Peter Rehder.
Widower Melchior Kretzinger is recorded on the 1767 census of Stahl am Tarlyk in Household No. 66 along with his mother Anna Katharina (age 52) and a note recording that his wife had died during the trip between St. Petersburg and Saratov while part of the group led by Mr. Hildebrandt. They had settled in Stahl am Tarlyk on 30 September 1767.
Both the Oranienbaum passenger list and the 1767 census record that Melchior Kretzinger came from the German village of Regensburg.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Kretzinger 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): 77.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 219.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #250.
Brent Mai