Peter Auer was born about 1737 in Contwig, 6 kilometers east of Zweibrücken in what today is the German state of Rhineland-Pfalz. He married in the Catholic Church there on 5 May 1761 to Maria Magdalena Brungard. They had two sons, each born in Contwig: (1) Franz Peter, baptized on 5 March 1762; and (2) Simon Peter, born on 28 February 1765.
Soon after their second boy was born, Peter and his family immigrated to Russia, and the youngest son, Simon Peter, died on the journey.
The remaining Auer family, along with daughter Anna who was born in route, arrived in the colony of Rohleder on 14 June 1766. The family is recorded there on the 1767 Census in Household No. 9.
Son Franz Peter is still living in Rohleder at the time of the 1798 census. He is recorded there in Household No. Rl15.
- 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).
- Parish records of Contwig (LDS Film No. 489413).
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Nordost-Institut, 2008): 49.