Michael Nikolai, a miller (Müller), his wife Katharina, and Johann (age 12) 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.
They arrived in the Volga German colony of Krasnoyar on 20 July 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 10. In 1788, widow Katharina Nikolai and her son moved from Krasnoyar to Reinwald.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Michael Nikolai was a miller from the German region of Erbach. The 1767 census records that he was a farmer from the Darmstadt region.
- 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): 286-287.
- 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): Rw21, Mv1394.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 416.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #2085.
Brent Mai