Matthias Sturm, a farmer, his wife Magdalena, and sons (Peter, age 14½; Johann, age 13; Johann, age 2½; Christian, age ¼) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 15 September 1766 aboard the galliot Adler under the Skipper Paul Adam Drath.
Matthias Sturm, his wife Magdalena, and sons (Peter, age 14½; Johann, age 13; Johann [again], age 2½; Christian, age ¼) are recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767 along with a note that the two youngest sons died en route.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Brabander on 19 August 1767. Mattias, his wife Anna Maria, and sons (Peter, age 17; Johann, age 15) are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 95 along with stepchildren Ernest Sonntag (age 18), Magdalena Sonntag (age 12), and Mattias Sonntag (age 8).
The 1767 census records that Matthias Sturm came from the German village of Burbach in the Trier region.
- 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): Bn39.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 235.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #5954.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #6659-6664.
Brent Mai