Ernst was aged four when he arrived in Australia on 2nd March 1849 with his parents and aunt on the George Washington. His younger brother Ernst Fredrich Nagel had died on the voyage of Cholera aged 14 months.
Ernst and his family settled in the Hahndorf area of the Adelaide Hills. On any Australian record of Ernst he is recorded as Henry Charles Ernst Nagel. At the age of 20 he moved with his family to Moonta where he worked with his father under Captain Hancock at the Moonta Mines.
Henry married Johanne Ernestina Urbasch on 17th October 1867 at the St Thomas Church of England at Balhannah East of Adelaide. Ernestina had arrived in Australia on the ship Pauline at the age of five. Her father Gottlieb Johann George Urbasch had died on the voyage which left her mother and sisters to settle in the new country alone. The couple settled in Moonta.
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| Henry & Ernestina Nagel |
Ernst and Ernestina had ten children. They lost their second child Julius Ernst Nagel to typhoid on 27th December 1870 aged eight months.
They moved to Adelaide in 1904 when their daughter Elena developed tuberculosis. Elena died on Christmas Eve 1906 aged twenty nine. After her death her parents returned to Moonta.
Three years later Ernst Henry Nagel died at the age of sixty four, he is buried in Moonta Cemetery.
In 1911 Johanna moved to live near her daughter Matilda. On 3rd February 1922 Johanna Ernestina Nagel died of a stroke in the Royal Adelaide Hospital. She was aged eighty.
