Johann Nicolaus and Anna Elisabeth Fuchs raised their family in the village of Martinstein, west and a little south of Bad Kreuznach in the Pfalz (today the state of Rhineland-Palatinate).
They arrived in the port of Oranienbaum, Russia, on 13 September 1766 along with 5 of their children, all of whom had been born in Martinstein: Anna Eva (born 9 May 1752), Johann Nicholas (25 May 1756), Johann Philipp (born 19 May 1759), Maria Catharina (born 29 April 1762), and Johann Wilhelm (3 September 1765). Parents Nicolaus and Anna Elisabeth died before reaching the Volga colonies, but the children arrived in Yagodnaya Polyana on 16 September 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 Census in Household No. 80.
- Parish records of Martinstein - LDS Film No. 493219.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 194.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): 396.