Gottfried Maaser, son of Johann Nicolaus Maser & Anna Maria Trinkaus, was born on 23 November 1742 in Lengfeld, today part of the village of Otzberg, east of Darmstadt. He married Anna Eva Lutz who had also been born in Lengfeld on 20 January 1742. They immigrated to Russia arriving from Lübeck at the port in Oranienbaum on 8 August 1766 aboard a ship under the command of skipper Johann Gottfried Seelender.
The family arrived in the Volga German colony of Kukkus on 26 June 1767, and are recorded there on the 1767 Census in Household No. 24. The family is still living in Kukkus at the time of the 1798 Census, recorded there in Household No. Kk40.
- 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 for Lengfeld (LDS Film No. 1340331).
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 467.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): Document No. 3384.