Dobrinka

Alternate Names
Dobrinka,
Nishnaya Dobrinka,
Nischnaja Dobrinka,
Nizhnyaya Dobrinka
Church

The congregation in Dobrinka was part of the Galka parish which was founded in 1767.

Type of Settlement
History

Dobrinka was founded on 29 June 1764 by the Government as a Lutheran colony.  It was the first Volga German colony to be founded and the site selected was along the Dobrinka River where it enters the Volga River.

In 1774, as Pugachev was making his way south through the Volga German territory, he traveled through Dobrinka.  According to historian Jacob Dietz, Pugachev had the body of the government astronomer Lovitz, who was visiting in the colony at the time, impaled on a stake.

Population
Population Table
Year
Households
Population
Total
Male
Female
1767
94
307
 
 
1769
85
323
168
155
1773
83
353
185
168
1788
73
382
195
197
1798
83
552
276
276
1816
119
856
431
425
1834
158
1,687
844
843
1850
202
2,601
1,307
1,294
1857
290
2,779
1,393
1,386
1859
197
2,866
1,441
1,425
1886
321
2,534
1,290
1,244
1891
292
3,620
1,855
1,765
1894
296
4,071
2,066
2,005
1897
 
2,737*
1,387
1,350
1904
 
4,661
 
 
1911
 
5,619
 
 
1912
 
5,400
 
 
1920
584**
3,719
 
 
1922
 
3,296
 
 
1926***
670
3,418
1,643
1,775
1931
 
3,660****
 
 
1939
 
4,262
 
 

*Of whom 2,709 were German.
**Of which 576 households were German.
***Of whom 3,364 were German (658 households: 1,604 male & 1,760 female).
****Of whom 3,636 were German.

Religion

Lutheran

Sources

Beratz, Gottieb. The German colonies on the Lower Volga, their origin and early development: a memorial for the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the first German settlers on the Volga, 29 June 1764 . Translated by Adam Giesinger (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1991): 349.

Diesendorf, V.F. Die Deutschen Russlands : Siedlungen und Siedlungsgebiete : Lexicon. Moscow, 2006.

Dietz, Jacob E. History of the Volga German Colonists (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2005): 65, 87-88.

List of Settlements in the Russian Empire in 1859, vol. 38: Saratov Province (St. Petersburg, 1862): p.59.

Mink, A.N. Historical and Geographical Dictionary of the Saratov Province [in Russian] (Saratov, Russia, 1898): 231-234.

Orlov, Gregorii. Report of Conditions of Settlements on the Volga to Catherine II , 14 February 1769.

Pallas, P.S. Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reichs. Theil 3,2, Reise aus Sibirien zurueck an die Wolga im 1773sten Jahr (St. Petersburg: Kaiserl. Academie der Wissenschaften, 1776): 621.

Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 313-339.

Pleve, Igor R. The German Colonies on the Volga: The Second Half of the Eighteenth Century , translated by Richard Rye (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 2001): 318.

Preliminary Results of the Soviet Census of 1926 on the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Pokrovsk, 1927): 28-83.

"Settlements in the 1897 Census." Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia (Winter, 1990): 18.

Surnames with Confirmed Pre-Volga Origins