Basel, Switzerland is the city to which the Busers traveled from Laufelfingen. At Basel, they caught a boat down the Rhine to Rotterdam, where they boarded the Eagle, a British sailing ship going to the New World. The Busers were one of several Swiss families who made the voyage together in response to recruitment efforts by the colony of South Carolina. By this time, the Buser’s belongings had been so severely depleted by emigration taxes levied by the Church and town that they had to purchase passage by signing into indentured servitude. Much of the 1736 Basel experienced by the ancestral Busers is fully preserved today in the old city section, which features an ornate red City Hall, a street market sprawled out on the square, and beautiful old houses, shops and churches. We attended Easter Sunday worship services at the Basel Cathedral, whose corner stone was laid in 1000 AD, wondering if perhaps the Busers may have also worshipped here before embarking upon their transatlantic journey. We climbed to the top for a magnificent view of the city and the Rhine. As the Busers looked back for one last view of their homeland, it is these twin steeples that they would have seen on the horizon.

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