My 3xgreat grandfather, Johann Georg Kuchel, arrived at Holdfast Bay, South Australia, on the Prince George, on or about 20 November 1838, with his wife and 3 of his 4 sons (one followed later).

He was described as a vine dresser, a person who cultivates and prunes grapevines.

He came from Langmeil in Züllichau-Schwiebus, Frankfurt, Brandenburg. Langmeil was a small village, 2 miles from Klemzig, where Pastor Kavel, the leader of the first group of Old Lutherans to South Australia, was the local pastor.

But Johann Georg Kuchel may have been born in Nussdorf (Nußdorf), Landau, Pfalz, Bavaria (Bayern). Nussdorf is a borough of Landau in der Pfalz, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Until 1972 it was an independent municipality. Nussdorf is a wine-growing village and as such part of the wine-growing region Palatinate.

I have tracked my ancestors (Kuchel, sometimes spelt Küchel or Kuechel) back to about 1550 (13 generations) in that area.

On 23 April 1525, a peasant uprising broke out in Nußdorf, which developed into the Palatine Peasants’ War. On the same day, Nussdorf farmers plundered an estate belonging to the monastery. Until the suppression of the peasant revolt in the Battle of Pfeddersheim on 24 June 1525, in which about 8,000 peasants were killed, the short-lived “Nußdorfer Haufen” plundered numerous castles and monasteries and the associated goods in the Southern Palatinate.

After the Thirty Years’ War (1618 – 1648), the almost completely depopulated Nussdorf came together with Landau under French sovereignty. During the four sieges of Landau in the 18th century, Nussdorf was repeatedly plundered.

From 1793 to 1814, it was part of the French Republic (until 1804) and then part of the Napoleonic Empire. In 1815 the community had a total of 1210 inhabitants and the town was added to Austria. Just one year later, the town, like the entire Palatinate, became part of the Kingdom of Bavaria. From 1818 to 1862. When they moved to Brandenburg, it was the first time these Kuchels had lived under Prussian rule.

From the reported (without evidence of source other than family trees) births of Johann Gottfried Erdmann Kuchel in Bavaria to Johann Samuel Kuchel in Brandenburg, it would seem Johann Georg and Anna Dorothea may have moved a long distance (about 850 kms) between 1812 and 1815 from the French-controlled Palatinate to Prussian Brandenburg, during the Napoleonic Wars.­­­­­

So, the barge to Hamburg and the boat trip to South Australia in 1838 may have followed a significant and large earlier move.

I am sure there is more for me to find.

Let me know if you want further information about, or the sources of, the above.