Michael Wetzel, a farmer, arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 7 August 1766 aboard the ship named Nordstern (North Star) under the command of Skipper Detlev Behling.
Michel Wetzel is recorded on a list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
It is not known in which colony he settled.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Michael Wetzel came from the German region of Sachsen (Saxony).
There are no known surviving male lines of this Wetzel 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): 659.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766 (Saratov: State Technical University, 2010): #5232 (p.336).
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #2057.
Brent Mai