Widow Margaretha Schäfer and her children (Johann, age 10½; Elisabeth, age 7; Johann [again], age 2] arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 26 August 1766 aboard a snow-brig named Die Jäger (The Hunter) under the command of Skipper Gabriel Will.
Johann Valentin Schäfer (age 12) and his siblings (Anna, age 10; Otto Heinrich, age 2) are recorded on the 1767 census of Kaneau in Household No. 68 along with their stepfather Johann Adam Windemuth.
In 1786, Valentin Schäfer and his family moved from Kaneau to Schaffhausen.
The 1767 census does not record from where the Schäfer children came.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 34.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 861.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #7102.
- 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): Sh30, Sh44, Mv1141.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 259.
Brent Mai