Transcript: Opportunity Beckoned in the New World

Narration: Hans Diebold saw opportunity beckoning in the new world. Pamphlets written by the Quaker, William Penn, were circulating in Alsace, part of his campaign to attract settlers to his new colony of Pennsylvania.Stephen Colbert: A plantation seems a fit place for those clogged and oppressed about a livelihood. These persons that providence seems to have most fitted for Plantations are carpenters, masons, smiths, weavers, tailors, shoemakers, shipwrights, et cetera.

Narration: By the early 1700s, Germans -including Colbert’s ancestors - were crowding onto ships bound for Philadelphia.Gates: There was just one little obstacle. Believe it or not, anti-immigration sentiment was already powerful. Deep suspicion of non-English speaking immigrants led to the passage of a law in 1727, requiring all men over the age of 16 who were not British subjects to swear allegiance to the English monarchy upon landing at the Port of Philadelphia. Now Stephen the second ship to arrive after the passage of this law was a ship called the James Goodwill. This is the list of the men from that ship who signed that oath.

Colbert: Hans Diebold Ledermann.

Gates: That, Stephen Colbert, is your seventh great grandfather.

Colbert: That is unbelievable.

Narration: For a nation formed by immigrants, we’ve not always greeted new arrivals with open arms.