Michael Wittmann, a farmer, his wife Barbara, and sons (Philipp, age 8; Friedrich, age 5) arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 19 July 1766 aboard the snow-brig named Maria Sophia under the command of Skipper Johann Bauert.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Preuss on 16 August 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 83 along with a note that Barbara had died there on 14 September 1767.
The Oranienbaum passenger list records that Michael Wittmann came from the German region of Neuburg. The 1767 census records that Michael Wittmann came from the German village of Hammerstein in the Kurpfalz.
There are no known surviving male lines of this Wittmann family among the Volga German colonies.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Auswanderung deutscher Kolonisten nach Russland im Jahre 1766 (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2019): 31.
- Idt, Andreas and Georg Rauschenbach. Deutsche Kolonisten im Jahr 1766 in Oranienbaum und in den Siedlungsorten: Die Kuhlberg-Listen (Moscow: Idt & Rauschenbach, 2024): 335.
- 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): Ps85.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 3 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2005): 427.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): #2482.
Brent Mai