Johann Schäfer, an artist (Kunstmaler), his wife Margaretha, and daughter Margaretha Dorothea (age 1) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 14 June 1766 aboard the ship named Die Neue Fortuna (The New Fortune) under the command of Skipper Ahrens Steingraber.
Nikolaus Schäfer, a teacher (Lehrer), his wife Margaretha, and daughter Margaretha (age 2) are recorded on the 1767 census of Stahl am Tarlyk in Household No. 64 along with a note that they relocated to the colony of Warenburg in 1768. They had arrived in Stahl am Tarlyk on 5 September 1767.
Both the Oranienbaum passenger list and the 1767 census record that Nikolaus Schäfer came from the German region of Magdeburg.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Schäfer family among the Volga German colonies.
- 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): 272.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 218.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #1970.
Brent Mai