Sommer (Kratzke)*
The baptisms of four children born to Johann Philipp & Maria Barbara Sommer are recorded in the parish register of Altlußheim: (1) Anna Rosina, baptized 7 July 1759; (2) Maria Magdalena, baptized 22 August 1761; (3) Ferdinand, baptized 7 January 1764; and (4) Johann Leonhard, baptized 2 May 1765.
Johann Philipp Sommer (28), his wife Maria Barbara Gottfried (age 25), and children (Anna Rosina, age 6; Maria Magdalena, age 3; Johann Leonhard, age ½) are recorded on a list of colonists dated 23 September 1765 who were gathering in the town of Worms. They had arrived in Worms on 21 September 1765. A note on this list records that son Johann Leonhard Sommer died in Hamburg in route to Russia.
Johann Philipp Sommer, a carpenter (Zimmermann), his wife Maria Barbara, and children (Anna Rosina, age 10; Georg, age 1) are recorded on the 1767 census of Kratzke in Household No. 47. They had settled there on 8 May 1767.
The 1765 Worms list records that Johann Philipp Sommer came from the German village of Altlußheim. The 1767 census records that Johann Philipp Sommer came from the German village of Kemberg. [Kemberg is in Anhalt-Sachsen, and it is unknown why Kemberg is recorded on the 1767 census.]
There are no known surviving male lines of this Sommer family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Einige Kapitel aus der Geschichte des Kolonisationsprojects von Katharina II, 1763-1775 (Moscow: Andreas Idt, Georg Rauschenbach, 2021): 113 (#013-017).
- Mai, Brent Alan. 1798 Census of the German Colonies along the Volga (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1999): Kr13, Mr03.
- Parish register of Altlußheim.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 460.
Brent Mai
Maggie Hein