There are two Nahm families that arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 22 July 1766 aboard the pink Lev under the command of Lieutenant Fyodor Fyodorov. They are believed to be brothers, but this relationship needs further research to be confirmed.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Pfeifer on 20 August 1767.
(1) Valentin Nahm and his family are recorded on the 1767 census of Pfeifer in Household No. 21. The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Valentin Nahm was a shoemaker while the 1767 census records that he was a farmer.
Valentin Nahm, his family, and his brother Nikolaus are recorded on the 1798 census of Pfeifer in Household No. Pf11.
(2) Johann Adam Nahm and his family are recorded on the 1767 census of Pfeifer in Household No. 22. The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Johann Adam Nahm was a shoemaker while the 1767 census records that he was a farmer.
[Johann] Adam Nahm and his family are recorded on the 1798 census of Pfeifer in Household No. Pf18 along with a note that 2 of his sons are working in Neu-Kolonie.
Johann Georg Nahm, son of Johann Adam Nahm, from Pfeifer and his family are recorded on the 1811 census of Hölzel in Household No. 24 along with a note that he had arrived in Hölzel from Pfeifer in 1799.
In 1792, Baptist Nahm moved from Pfeifer to Neu-Kolonie.
The 1767 census records that both Valentin Nahm and Johann Adam Nahm came from the German village of Freudenberg.
[Some translations of early documents erroneously report this surname as Kamm.]
- 1811 Hölzel Census (Household No. 24).
- 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): Nk15, Pf11, Pf18, Mv2261.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 382.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #2409, #2440.
Brent Mai