Individual Details

Paulus Kuester was born about 1644 in Kaldenkirchen, Rheinland-Pfalz, (later part of Germany), to Arnold (Arets) Küster and Catharina Von Haren. It was two years after the end of the Thirty Years War, which was devastating to Germany. It is estimated that the German states lost 15-30% of their population, 50% of the male population. Germany was broken up into many territories and its power was decentralized. Foraging French soldiers had ravaged the German Rhineland. Many people, probably thousands, were burned at the stake during the religious wars. Rape and pillage were common practice. When Paulus was about 22, he married Gertrude Doors on October 16, 1668 at the Reformed Church in Kaldenkirchen, where they lived and had ten children – see Gertrude’s bio for more on the children. In the period 1660 to 1680, several Quakers including William Penn visited Holland and the Rhine Valley of what would later become Germany, and organized gatherings where they preached the ideas of George Fox The Quaker. William Penn's mother was Dutch and it is likely he spoke the local languages. Many people, including some who had been Mennonites in Krefeld, in what was then Holland, and Krisheim, in the German Palatinate, converted to the new Quaker faith. And then one day William Penn arrived with a brand new idea. The King of England had given him a huge stretch of uninhabited land in the New World, no doubt influenced by the idea that Quakers were a nuisance and this was a good way to get rid of them. And so, if you lived in a little farming village in this region, and an Englishman named William Penn came around with an offer to immigrate to his peaceful kingdom in America, it sounded wonderful. Religious toleration was an important part of the attractiveness, and nowhere to be found in Europe. Thirteen Quaker and Mennonite families left Krefeld in 1683 on a ship called The Concord and headed for the New World

Birth	Abt 1644	Kaldenkirchen, Rheinland, Prussia, Germany
Marriage	16 Oct 1668	Kaldenkirchen, Rheinland, Prussia, Germany - Gertrude Doors
Immigration	1687	United States
Death	28 Jan 1708	Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Religion		mennonite
Will

Spouse	Gertrude Doors (1645 - 1708)
Child	Arnold Kuesters (1660 - 1739)
Child	Johannes Kuesters (1670 - 1708)
Child	Mathias Kuesters (1671 - )
Child	Reiner Kuesters (1674 - )
Child	Anna Kuesters (1677 - )
Child	Eva Kuesters (1681 - 1748)
Child	Hermanus Kuesters (1682 - 1760)
Child	Catrin Kuesters (1687 - )
Child	Margaret Kuesters (1690 - )

Father	Arnold Kuester (1606 - 1679)
Mother	Catharine Von Haren (1606 - )
Sibling	Maria Kuesters (1630 - )
Sibling	Johannes Kuesters (1632 - )
Sibling	Henricus Kuesters (1635 - )
Sibling	Catharina Kuesters (1637 - )
Sibling	Mathias Kuesters (1640 - )
Sibling	Lambertin Kuesters (1642 - )
Sibling	Lucia Kuesters (1649 - 1649)

Notes