Nicolaus Zitzmann, son of Hans Zitzmann and Margaretha Heuss, was born 5 October 1716 in Gersfeld (Röhn), Hessen, Germany. He married there on 28 August 1742 to Anna Maria Strauch, daughter of Johann Strauch. Some of the children of Nicolaus Zitzmann were born in Dorrnhof and some in Obernhausen, small villages close by Gersfeld. This lineage can be traced to Jorg Zitzmann, born 1535, a spoon carver in Mosbach, (near Gersfeld) Germany.
The family arrived in Russia on 14 September 1766, along with many other families from Gersfeld. Nicolaus Zitzmann died during the journey to the villages. His widow married Hans Kroening, whose wife had also died. The Kroening family reported in the Frank First Settler’s list includes the Zitzmann children. The combined Kroening-Zitrzmann family is recorded on the 1767 census of Frank in Household #110.
- Parish records of Gersfeld, Fulda, Archive of the Evangelical Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck in Kassel, on Archion.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010) p. 406
- Rauschenbach, Georg. Deutsche Kolonisten Auf Dem Weg Von St. Petersburg Nach Saratow: Transportlisten von 1766-1767 (Moscow: 2017): p. 316
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 437.
