Chrisitan Mortzen [sic], a farmer, his wife Maria, and daughter Katharina (age 1¼) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 11 June 1766 aboard a ship named Der Junge Heinrich (The Young Henry) under the command of Skipper Heinrich Niemann.
Christian März, a farmer, his wife Maria, and son Christian (age 8-weeks) are recorded on the 1767 census of Stahl am Tarlyk in Household No. 37. They had settled there on 5 September 1767.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Christian Mortzen [sic] came from the German region of Holstein. The 1767 census records that Christian März came from the Danish village of Dorup [?].
There are no known surviving male lines of this Mertz 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): 289.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 213.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #2104.
Brent Mai