[Russian name: MAKAROVKA]
Saratov Province: Kamyshin District


MERKEL'S FOUNDERS
This information was extracted from the List of Original Settlers, Colony of Makarovka/Merkel, courtesy of the American Historical Society of Germans From Russia (AHSGR). This list was recently published by AHSGR in an addendum of The German Colonies on the Volga: The Second Half of the Eighteenth Century by Igor R. Pleve, Saratov, Russia, translated by Richard R. Rye.

Merkel’s founders consisted of 1 member of the gentry class -a member of the Holstein family who seems to disappear from history, 1 miller, 2 merchants, 1 trumpeter, 1 blacksmith, 1 button maker, 1 cobbler, 2 shoemakers, 2 tailors, 5 weavers, 1 cloth maker, 1 fabric master, 2 gardeners, 1 saddler, 4 metal smiths, 2 turners, 1 wheelwright, 1 army surgeon, 2 chimney sweeps, 1 stonemason, 1 butcher, 1 salt worker, 1 miner, and numerous farmers. All were to proclaim themselves farmers at the insistence of the Kontora of the Oversight of Foreigners in Saratov. Many of these early settlers moved on to other villages in the first few years, and others came to take their place.

Most of the early Merkel colonists were Lutheran, though the founders list indicated that three households, including that of Johann Georg Merkel, were Catholic, and one family was of the Reformed Faith. Vorsteher Merkel had already died by the time the list of original settlers was compiled in August, 1766!

Places of origin for Merkel founders varied from the German districts of Hamburg, Prussia, Saxony, Holstein, Tserarets and the Pfalz, as well as the cities of Brandenburg, Brauschweig, Mecklenburg, Hanover, Wittenberg, and Wetenbug. Founding families were also listed as having derived from France, Poland, Denmark and “the Finnish nations“!5

Notes

5 List of Original Settler’s, Colony of Makarovka/Merkel, American Historical Society of Germans from Russia.