Ludwig (Yagodnaya Polyana)
Heinrich Ludwig, a farmer, his wife Anna, and children (Katharina, age 24; Ludwig, age 19; Johann, age 13; Elisabeth, age 5-weeks) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 14 September 1766 aboard a ship under the command of Skipper Reders. [The transport list records that the infant Elisabeth (who died in route) is actually the daughter of Katharina.]
Heinrich Ludewig [sic], his wife Anna Margtha [sic], children (Martin, age 20; Joh. Henrich, age 14), and daughter Catharina & her daughter Anna Elisabeth (age 1) are recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767 along with a note that parents (Heinrich & Anna Margtha) and granddaughter Anna Elisabeth died en route.
The surviving children settled in the Volga German colony of Yagodnaya Polyana on 16 September 1767. Son Martin Ludwig is recorded on the 1767 census in Household No. 36 along with the Matthias Machleit family. Daughter Katharina Ludwig is recorded on the 1767 census in Household No. 72 along with the Johann Heinrich Götz. The 1767 census does not record a relationship among the Ludwig, Machleit, and Götz families.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that the Ludwig family came from the German area of Darmstadt while the 1767 census records that they came from the German area of Nidda.
Elisabeth Ludwig, daughter of Johann Heinrich Ludwig from Unterschmidt [Unter-Schmitten], married Conrad Beutel on 26 June 1766 in Büdingen. This couple settled in the Volga German colony of Yagodnaya Polyana, so the conclusion can be drawn that this Ludwig family came from the German village of Unterschmidt near Nidda.
- 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): Yp74.
- Mai, Brent Alan, trans. & ed. Transport of the Volga Germans from Oranienbaum to the Colonies on the Volga: 1766-1767 (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1998): 7321-7322, 7329-7332.
- 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): #714.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 182, 192.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #6487.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #8435-8436, 8443-8446.
Brent Mai