"SIXTY-EIGHT COMPANY. -- [Rufus K.] Page, 17 souls. In the Millennial Star, Vol. XV, page 587, appears the following editorial notice:
'ARRIVAL FROM GERMANY. Four or five families of Saints, numbering in all seventeen souls, left Hamburg on the thirteenth of August, (1853) and arrived at Liverpool (England) on the sixteenth, with the expectation of sailing about the twenty-fourth for New Orleans. Elder Daniel Garn accompanied them to Liverpool. The company are en route for Great Salt Lake City; Elder Garn returns to Hamburg.'
These were the first Saints who emigrated directly from any of the countries now embraced in the Great German Empire, so far as I have been able to learn. Some of them were from Flensburg, in Schleswig, which at that time belonged to Denmark, and where the late Elder H. P. Jensen had organized a branch of the Church in the spring of 1853. This first company of German Saints crossed the sea from Hamburg to Hull, and thence went by rail to Liverpool, where they embarked on the ship Page, a sailing vessel, in the latter part of 1853, and set sail for New Orleans, together with nearly three hundred Irish emigrants, all non-'Mormons.' After a voyage of eight weeks duration, the Page arrived safely in New Orleans, from where the little company of Saints proceeded up the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri. There they remained during the winter of 1853-54, and all finally left the Church, except three, namely: Daniel F. Lau, (who is now the Bishop of Soda Springs, Idaho), Fred Fichzer and Elizabeth Arens. These three came to Utah in 1854, crossing the plains in Thomas William's freight company. The seventeen souls who sailed from Liverpool consisted of a Brother Bender (the leader of the company), wife and child; Daniel F. Lau, an unmarried man, a Brother Long, wife and child; Brother Newman and family; Fred Fichzer and wife, and Elizabeth Arens, an unmarried woman."
Cont., 8:10 (Aug 1892), p.465-6
(source abbreviations)