Metzler (Wittmann)
Johann[es] Metzler, a single baker (Bäcker), arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 15 September 1766 aboard a ship under the command of Skipper Franz Nikolaus Schröder.
Johann Metzler is recorded on the list of colonists being transported from St. Petersburg to Saratov in 1767.
He is recorded on a list of Beauregard recruits that was attached to the 1767 census in Household No. 143 along with his new wife Maria [Rupp] and the orphan Nikolaus Rupp who is believed to be Maria's nephew, with both of whom he had arrived in Oranienbaum.
This family is believed to have settled in the Volga German colony of Wittmann because the orphan Nikolaus Rupp is recorded on the 1798 census of Schönchen (Sn18) as being from Wittmann.
The 1767 census records that Johannes Metzler came from the German village of Orb.
- 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): Sn18.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2008): 377.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766 (Saratov: State Technical University, 2010): #6799, #6817, #6818.
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten auf dem Weg von St. Petersburg nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: G.V. Rauschenbach, 2017): #4689.
Brent Mai