He sailed from Hamburg in 1862 and arrived in Montevideo, Uruguay. Together with other Swiss settlers created Nueva Helvecia, the first Swiss colony in Uruguay. Then he travelled through Argentina, Carmen de Patagones and Santa Fe, and settled in 1869 in Paraguay, in the area of Caazapá, where he married Elizabeth Vera and had two other sons: Santiago Guillermo and Eduardo Schaerer. The latter would eventually become President of Paraguay and one of the most influential politicians in the history of this country. Years later his other sons, Emil Jakob and Hans Otto, came from Switzerland and also settled in Paraguay.
