July 26 & 27, 2003
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We discovered that Andreas Kusel is my Great Great Great Great Grandfather. |
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I guess the place to start the family
tree would be to go over to Germany where the Kusel name came
from. There are many Kusels in Germany and there are 3 towns named Kusel.
In 1995, Bienca Kusel (a German foreign exchange
student in Audubon, Iowa) gave me some information about
the Kusel name. She said that Kreisel
was the original spelling.
Kreis [definition:
means circle (to turn around)], and with the el
[definition: means to turn around fast]. Hence Kusel means whirlwind
One Kusel town is in the state of Rheinland-Pfalz southeast of Luxembourg
and Northeast of France.
Old maps of Oldenburg show the town of Kusel (in southern Germany) spelled Cusel.
From what I've been told Napoleon changed the spelling of lots of names and he changed Kusel to Cusel.
Friedrich George Christian Kusel who came over from Prussia to Davenport, Iowa in 1855 |