Wilhelm Kummersdorf [sic], a farmer, his wife Anna, and children (Mattias, age 20; Anna Maria, age 18) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 15 September 1766 aboard the snow-brig Die Frau Dietrika under the command of Skipper Joachim Friedrich Luhn.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Semenovka on 24 July 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 16 under the surname of Wanstendorf.
Son Mathias Gundersdorf [sic] is recorded on the 1798 census of Semenovka in Household No. Se64.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Wilhelm Kummersdorf [sic] came from the German region of Köln. The 1767 census records that Wilhelm Wanstendorf came from the German village of Adenau in the Köln region.
There are no known surviving male lines of this family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 33.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 762.
- 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): Se64.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 181.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #6096.
Brent Mai