Reifegerste
An article by Hermann Wäschke records the following:
Christoph Reifegerste, a 26-year old guardsman (Schutzgenosse) from Retzau, with his wife, née Hartmann, and child Johanna-Louise (½-year old), from Sollnitz. The property he left behind was auctioned and the amount was given to the jurisdiction of Retzau after debts of 8 Thlr. 14 Gr. were paid.
They are recorded on a list of subjects from Sollnitz who escaped to Russia.
Christoph Reifegerste, a farmer, and his wife Dorothea 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.
Christoph Reifegerste and his wife Dorothea are recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Boisroux on 7 June 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 7.
In 1788, Gottfried Reifegerste moved from Boisroux to Bettinger.
The 1767 census records that Christoph Reifegerste came from the German village of Golniss in the Dessau 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): Bt09, Bx49, Mv0321.
- Mai, Brent Alan and Dona Reeves-Marquardt. German Migration to the Russian Volga (1764-1767) (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2003): #1137.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 141.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #1405.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #0767-0768.
- Wäschke, Hermann. "Deutsche Familien in Russland" in Roland, Archiv für Stamm- und Wappenkunde, Jubiläumsschrift, 18 January 1912: 90.
Brent Mai
Karl Becker
List of subjects from Sollnitz who secretly escaped to Russia in 1766.
Source: Karl Becker.