Archive of Samuel Strauch

The Archive of Samuel Strauch is presented here by courtesy of his descendant Kersten Stubendorff. The memoirs were kept in the family archive, and their initial text was deciphered to the modern spelling by Dr. Uwe Stubendorff, also a descendant.

Samuel Strauch (1741-1822) was a rich businessman in Riga. In his memoirs he also informs about the names of his father - Heinrich Strauch, who was an artisan's son in Tukums, and of his mother - Gertrutha Margaretha b. Häffcken, a daughter of a goldsmith in Riga.

Information about some of the descendants of Heinrich Strauch compiled by Dr. Uwe Stubendorff is available in another Page

Memoirs of S.Strauch are presented on this Site in 4 files. All of them are in German:

Memoirs of Samuel Strauch	This is the main text of the Memoirs and can be considered as consisting of three parts: 1. Business life. In 1757 S.Strauch began his work in the company of the brothers Friedrich and Wilhelm Oom, and Blanckenhagen and worked for it until 1773. In 1772 his salary was 220 Alberts Talers per year and he received at Christmas an additional sum of money - 120 Alberts Talers. 1773 he traveled to West Europe. 1774 he began his own trade business together with Wevell - the company Wevell & Strauch. The business was not very successful and in 1777 the company was liquidated, and he started a new business of money exchange. 1789 he terminated the active business. 2. Life in marriage Samuel Strauch started to think about marriage only after he terminated his business. He described in details how he searched for the appropriate bride and at last married Anna Elisabeth Aderholt b.1771. The text contains information about the births of the children and about their baptisms. Additional information relevant to the variolation of his children can be found in another Page about smallpox. 3. Business losses Wishing to be honest in the describing of his life, he found it appropriate to inform about the cases when his business was not successful or when he was swindled. The description was based on his accounting books.
Das Samuel Strauch'sche Testament	The will of Samuel Strauch. The will was made in 1812. It began with the recommendations to his wife, whom she should propose to help her in the work with the will and with the remained property. According to the will, she herself received 50,000 Alberts Talers in her own property, and whatever she did with this money, she was not obliged to report to the children. From the text of the will it is not clear what the total amount of the property was and how it was to be divided among the children. 50,000 Talers are very great money (more than 1150 kg of silver), and a moderate size manor with several hundreds of serfs could be bought for this money. The will presents the detailed description of the future funeral of S.Strauch, of his coffin and of the inscription on the gravestone. He made special attention to organize the funeral as simple as possible. But to avoid eventual rumors that he would have wanted to spare money on his funeral, he set out what donations should be done to the Churches, to the armhouses and the hospitals of Riga. It seems interesting that he donated 100 Talers to each one of the churches no matter what congregation they belonged to (Lutheran, Russian Orthodox, Catholics and Reformat). In his will he set free his serfs (3 persons) after his death, but as in fact he died in 1822, when the serfdom was abolished, it had no effect. He got the serfs in his property when he possessed the manor Cronenberg (Lorupe) 1797-1800. Later the people who did not belong to the nobility were not allowed to buy manors with serfs.
Samuel Strauch Donationes seit Anno 1790	Being very rich, S.Strauch was frequently asked to help somebody. He described whom he helped and in what amount.
Samuel Strauch Journal	This is a day by day description of S.Strauch's travel to West Europe in 1773 - German states, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden. He describes whom he met there, what he bought and what it cost. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to understand what he actually bought, becauseI do not know many of items and their value.