Martin Stehle and his family arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 13 September 1766 on a boat under the command of Skipper Johann Grapp.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Kautz on 21 August 1767. They are recorded on the 1767 census in Household No. 25.
In 1792, Johann Christian Stehle moved from Kautz to Merkel.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Martin Stehle was a carpenter while the 1767 census records that he was a wheelwright.
The 1767 census records that the Stehle family came from the German village of Waldangelloch in Württemberg.
- Mai, Brent Alan. 1798 Census of the German Colonies along the Volga (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1999): Kz14, Mr26, Mv1252.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 339.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #5905.
Brent Mai