Luft (Frank / Yagodnaya Polyana)
There are two Luft families that are believed to be related because they travelled together from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767 and because one is recorded to be from Ulfa while the stepfather of the other is from Ulfa. Their relationship to each other, if any, needs further research.
(1) Johann [Georg] Luft, a single farmer, arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum aboard a ship under the command of Skipper Reders.
This Johann Georg Luft is recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767, right next to the Kniess family (and Luft stepchildren) noted below.
He settled in the Volga German colony of Frank in 1767 and is recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 42 along with his new wife Anna Christina.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Luft came from the German region of Darmstadt. The 1767 records that Johann Georg Luft came from the German village of Ulfa in the Hessen-Darmstadt region.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Luft family among the Volga German colonies.
(2) Another Luft family is recorded on the 1767 census of Yagodnaya Polyana in Household No. 17. Siblings Johannes Luft (age 20) and Anna Maria Luft (age 18), whose unnamed mother had died in route to the Volga and who had been married to Johann Heinrich Kniess, are recorded there. The 1767 census records that Johann Heinrich Kniess came from the German village of Ulfa in the Büdingen region.
Johann Kniess, a farmer, his wife Magdalena, and children (Kaspar, age 22; Anna, age 18; Margaretha, age 15; Katharina, age 12; Johann, age 6; Adam, age 3) arrived from Lübeck at the port in Oranienbaum on 29 July 1766 aboard the ship Apollo under the command of Skipper Friedrich Detloff Mörenberg.
Johann Henrich Kniess, his wife Helena, and [step-]children (Johannes [Luft], age 18; Anna Maria [Luft], age 16) are recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
Johannes Luft and his family is recorded on the 1798 census of Yagodnaya Polyana in Household No. Yp27.
Johann Daniel Luft, son of Johannes Luft, and his family are recorded on the 1834 census of Yagodnaya Polyana in Household No. 145.
- 1834 Yagodnaya Polyana Census (Household No. 145).
- 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): Fk053, Yp27.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 425.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 177.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766 (Saratov: State Technical University, 2010): #5030, #6518.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #8279-8283.
Brent Mai