Johann Andreas Michel, son of Johann Martin & Anna Maria Michel, was baptized on 10 February 1737 in the Evangelical Church of Rockenhausen. His brother, Johann Jacob, was baptized on 15 January 1752 in the Evangelical Church of Kerzenheim. Both villages are just a short distance north-west and north-east of Winnweiler, the place they are declared to have been born, which is located about 15 kilometers north-east of Kaiserlautern.
Johann Andreas & Johann Jakob Michel emigrated to Russia, departing from Lübeck aboard the English frigate Love and Unity with skipper Thomas Fairfax at the helm. They arrived in the port of Oranienbaum near St. Peterburg on 12 September 1766.
On 3 August 1767 they arrived in the Volga German colony of Boisroux, where they spent the first winter. They are recorded there on the 1767 Census in Household No. 46.
They eventually settled in the colony of Näb where they are recorded on the 1798 Census in Households No. Nb20 (Johann Jakob) & Nb29 (Johann Andreas).
- 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 Rockenhausen (LDS Film No. 193129).
- Parish records of Kerzenheim (LDS Film No. 247619).
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 1 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 1999): 271.
- Pleve, Igor. Lists of Colonists to Russia in 1766: Reports by Ivan Kulberg (Saratov: Saratov State Technical University, 2010): 348.