Peter Hartmann was born about 1743 in Staden, today part of the Wetteraukreis. He married Anna Catharina Braun of nearby Beienheim on 1 March 1762 in Fauerbach, east southeast of Nidda. The Hartmanns immigrated to Russia, arriving from Lübeck at the port in Oranienbaum on 10 August 1766 on a vessel under the command of Nicolau Peter Pinkom.
They arrived in Ernestinendorf on 3 August 1767 and are recorded there on the 1767 Census in Household No. 18. In 1782, the couple moved to Graf. The Hartmann family is recorded there on the 1798 Census in Household No. Gf20.
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).
Mai, Brent Alan, trans. & ed. Transport of the Volga Germans from Oranienbaum to the Colonies on the Volga: 1766-1767 (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1998): entries 4512-4513.
Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 399.
Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): 278.