Friedrich Merk [sic], a cobbler (Schuhmacher), and his family arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 4 July 1766 aboard the English frigate Love & Unity under the command of Skipper Thomas Fairfax.
Friderich Mirck [sic], his wife Sophia, and children (Carl, age 6; Johanna, age 4; Friderich, born en route) are recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
Friedrich Merk [sic], a cobbler (Schuhmacher), his wife [new] Johanna, and son Johann Karl (age 6) are recorded on the 1767 census of Boisroux in Household No. 57. They had arrived in Boisroux on 3 August 1767.
Karl Merker and his family are recorded on the 1798 census of Boisroux in Household No. Bx02. Subsequent documents continue to identify this family as Merker (rather than Merk).
The 1767 census records that Friedrich Merk [sic] came from the German village of Laas in the region of Sachsen (Saxony).
There are no known surviving male lines of this Merk family among the Volga German colonies.
- 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): Bx02, Bx09, Bx38.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 153.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #1279.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #4037-4041.
Brent Mai