Michael Nikolai and his family arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 4 July 1766 aboard the ship Der Junge Heinrich under the command of Skipper Heinrich Niemann.
They settled 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.
- 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