Johann [Merkel] (age 17), [step-]son of Peter Stuckart, arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 20 August 1766 aboard a galliot named Catharina Eleonora under the command of Skipper Peter Rehder.
Peter Stuckard [sic], his wife Maria Dorothea, and stepson Friedrich Merckel [sic] (age 17) are recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
Johann Merkel settled in the Volga German colony of Yagodnaya Polyana on 16 September 1767 and is recorded there in Household No. 34 along with his step-father Johann Peter Stuckart, the former husband of his deceased mother.
The 1767 census records that Johann Peter Stuckart came from the German village of Bobenhausen near Büdingen. Johann Merkel probably came from this area as well.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 34.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 814.
- 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): Yp92.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 181.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #6499.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #8442.
Brent Mai