Mauritius Zeidenzahl [sic], a velvet maker (Samtmeister), his wife Anna Katharina, and children (Barbara Helena, age 15; Johann Melchior, age 11; Dorothea, age 9; Dorothea [again], age 2⅛) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 21 July 1766 aboard a snow-brig named Mercurius under the command of Skipper Christian Heinrich Abelßen.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Urbach on 3 July 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 48.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Mauritius Zeidenzahl was a velvet maker while the 1767 census records that he was a craftsman (Handwerker).
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Mauritius Zeidenzal [sic] came from the German region of Sachsen (Saxony). The 1767 census records that Moritz Seidenzahl came from the German village of Suhl in the region of Sachsen (Saxony).
- 1861 Neu-Urbach Census.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 32.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 419.
- 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): Ur22, Ur23.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 281.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #3257.
Brent Mai