Carl Gottlieb Conrad Saalfeld, son of Johann Carl Saalfeld & Maria Christina Vogt, was baptized on 5 July 1742 in the Evangelical Church of Giessen, 68 kilometers north of Frankfurt. He married Elisabetha Schierart on 1 April 1766 in Büdingen, one of the gathering places for Germans applying for moving to Russia. She was a daughter of Reichard Schierart & Anna Dorothea Stefan, and had been baptized on 18 March 1742 in the Evangelical Church of Offenbach (am Main) near Frankfurt.
Carl Saalfeld and his wife emigrated to Russia, departing from Lübeck by the English frigate Love and Unity with skipper Thomas Fairfax at the helm. They arrived at the Russian port of Oranienbaum on 4 July 1766.
They settled in the Volga German colony of Schilling where widow Elisabeth is recorded on the 1798 Census in Household No. Sg071. Son Georg Michael moved in 1793 to Stahl am Tarlyk where he is recorded on the 1798 Census in Household No. St13. Daughters Regina and Catharina Barbara moved to Jost where they are recorded in 1798 in Households No. Jo34 & Jo52.
- 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 and Dona Reeves-Marquardt, German Migration to the Russian Volga (1764-1767) (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2003): 58.
- Parish records of Giessen (LDS Film No. 1193406).
- Parish records of Offenbach am Main (LDS Film No. 1272430).
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 422.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): 61.