Johannes Metzler, a son of Heinrich Metzler & Kunigunda Bötigler, was born on 14 July 1746, and baptized on 17 July 1746 in the Langstadt Evangelical Church, north of Gross-Umstadt in Hessen. Johannes married to Catharina Elisabetha (surname unknown). They immigrated to Russia, departing from the port of Lübeck by the ship Die Junger Friederika with the skipper Christian Korsholm, and arriving in Oranienbaum, Russia, on 18 June 1766.
Johannes Metzler and his wife settled in the Volga German colony of Straub on 12 May 1767 and are recorded there in the 1767 Census living in Household No. 9. On the 1798 Census, their descendants are still in Straub recorded in Households No. Sr35, Sr39, and Sr42.
- 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 of Langstadt (LDS Film No. 1340337).
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 4 (Göttingen: Nordost-Institut, 2008): 231.
- Pleve, Igor. List of Colonists to Russia in 1766 "Reports by Ivan Kulberg" (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): 82.