Possible Passage From Europe

In my North Carolina History class at Lenoir-Rhyne we have been studying how the different groups of people came to inhabit the Americas. The one that was of particular interest to me was the one dealing with German immigrants that arrived with William Penn in 1681. William Penn received land in the new world because King Charles II had owed a large debt to Penn’s father and after his father’s death Charles II granted land in the new world to William to settle the score. Since the Kuhn family came to North Carolina out of Pennsylvania this is of great interest to our ancestry.
The winter of 1688-1689 was the worst winter on record in Northern Europe. During this time period King Louis XIV of France had just laid waste to the Palatinate region in one of the many wars that occurred in the region. The Palatinate Region is in south-western Germany. It was attacked because France and Germany were locked in the conflict known as the War of The League of Augsburg. Louis destroyed the region to keep it from sending food to Brandenburg, the German capital. During the attack cities such as Mannheim, Heidelberg, and Worms were burned to the ground driving 500,000 Germans into exile. These exiled Germans needed somewhere to go, many would find it in the New World.
It is highly likely that this is how the Kuhns left Europe. This area of Germany is quite possibly where our family originated. Many of the refugees from this area traveled to the Netherlands and flooded seaports looking for passage to the New World. Many of them joined William Penn as he traveled to the Americas looking for religious freedom. I have not proven this situation to be true but it is a very likely possibility on how the Kuhn name reached the Americas. This was one of the largest exoduses from Europe by Germans which is why I believe that it is how we found our way to this great country.