He immigrated first to Pennsylvania in the United States and later to Waterloo Township in Upper Canada, now the Canadian province of Ontario.
At the time, Württemberg was ruled by a duchy of the same name, which was part of the Holy Roman Empire and was predominantly populated by Swabian people.
[3] The Dictionary of Canadian Biography suggests that he may have been attracted to Pennsylvania by the relocation to there of the charismatic preacher from Württemberg, John George Rapp, who sought to start a religious commune.
Benjamin Eby, who had encouraged early migration to the area, began to sell land along King Street to prospective commercial businessmen in the hopes of building up a more concentrated settlement.
These early businessmen included David and William Millar, who opened a dry goods and grocery store, and Jacob Hailer, another German immigrant, who opened a store selling chairs and spinning wheels on an acre of land at the southeast corner of King and Scott Streets that he had purchased from Eby in 1832.
[8] One of the earliest of these was an American, Phineas Varnum, who bought land along King Street West from Joseph Schneider to open a blacksmith shop and roadhouse or tavern.
[9] Gaukel bought the Varnum tavern site shortly after Hailer's arrival, but his land purchases would not end there.
[3] In July 1834, a travelling menagerie (referred to as a circus in some sources)[5] visited nearby Galt (then a part of the neighbouring Dumfries Township).
Following the event, dozens of people in different communities began exhibiting cholera symptoms, leading to a regional epidemic in an area with no hospitals and only a single doctor.
[15] He was soon married to his third and final wife, Dorothea Weismiller, whom Stroh describes as Swabian[5] and whom the Dictionary of Canadian Biography states was also from Württemberg.
[3] The inn was also the location where householders in Berlin and the surrounding area paid their taxes and nominated their representatives to the Wellington District Council.