George Bush's Remarks

Vice President George Bush's Remarks at Tricentennial Ceremony of German Immigration to America, Krefeld, June 25, 1983

Three centuries ago, after a 75-day voyage across the Atlantic in a cramped ship, 32 Mennonites and Quakers from Krefeld and two infants that had been born during the passage landed on the East Coast of the New World. It was October, the air had grown crisp and the autumn rains had begun. Exhausted and sick after their voyage, the Germans trudged from Philadelphia, then a settlement with two dirt roads, through six miles of dense forest to found a settlement of their own.

As winter approached they chopped down scores of trees and built their first homes of logs. "It may neither be described nor believed," wrote Franz Daniel Pastorius, the Krefelders' leader, "under what conditions of need and poverty...this German township was founded."

Yet the Germans had found what they came for, freedom of worship, and in a modest way their settlement soon began to thrive, the people grew flax, raised sheep for wool, and became known in the American colonies for their weaving. News of their success encouraged other Germans to leave the Old World for the New...

...Three hundred years ago, when that first ship set sail for the New World from Krefeld, one of those on board was named Thones Kunders. Eight generations later the family name had changed from Kunders to Conrad, and Charles Conrad, Jr., a direct descendant of Thones, became an astronaut and walked on the moon...