Conrad Nafts was born in Gelnhausen. He married Maria Elisabeth Ferter. She was born 16 October 1749 in Gelnhausen and died 6 November 1816 in Dönhof Russia. Conards father Philipp is also believed to have accompanied them on the first part of the journey, but does not appear in the 1768 census of Dönhof , where Conrad is listed as arriving on 18 June 1767. He is living in the household of Margaretha Reil (Household No. 76).
There is another Nafts (spelled Naphz in some German records) that immigrated to Russia from Gelnhausen. Heinrich Philipp Nafts, son of Heinrich Balthasar Naphz & Anna Maria Buß, was born in Gelnhausen on 25 November 1731. He married in Büdingen on 4 March 1766 to Susanna Maria Kayser, daughter of Johann Adam Kayser & Anna Margaretha Froschhäuser. The newlyweds arrived from Lübeck at the port of Oranienbaum on 4 July 1766 aboard the ship Der Junge Mathias under the command of skipper David Wollert. They settled in the colony of Beideck and are recorded there on the 1798 Census in Household No. Bd59.
The exact relationship of these two Nafts families is unknown at this time.
- Frey, Julius. "Auswanderung aus den Kreisen Gelnhausen und Büdingen im Jahre 1766." Geschichtsblätter für Stadt und Kreis Glenhausen. Herausgeber: Geschichtsverein Gelnhausen, 1965.
- Hepperlen, Joan. Family History of Phillip & Eva Elisabeth Stromberger Bechtholt of Tacoma, Washington (Ocean Shores, WA: J.M. Hepperlen, 1999).
- 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): 46.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 362.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): 135.