Joseph Spister, a farmer, his wife Dorothea, and children (Barbara, age 13; Johann Georg, age 8, Martin, age 2¼) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 7 May 1766 aboard the galliot named Anna Katharina under the command of Skipper Daniel Heyer.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Ober-Monjou on 5 March 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 2.
In 1769, Johann Georg Spister moved from Ober-Monjou to Schaffhausen. In 1784, widow Katharina Spister and her children moved from Ober-Monjou to Luzern.
The 1798 census of Luzern records that Jakob Spister is working in Katharinenstadt.
Jakob Spister and his family are recorded on the 1834 census of Luzern in Household No. 85.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Joseph Spister came from the German region of Bamberg. The 1767 census records that Joseph Spister came from the German village of Meisendorf in the district of Bamberg.
- 1834 Luzern Census (Household No. 85).
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 29.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 57.
- 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): Lz41, Sn26, Mv2028, Mv2063.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 289.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #104.
Brent Mai