Serching for G's Swiss roots
One of my big passions is genealogy. Between G & my families I have compiled over 300 names. Whenever I can I spend time working on verifying my sources and trying to find the links to our European ancestors. Now is the perfect time to do our European research, but it isn't always easy because the records are so old.
We finally had time to investigate one of our best leads in Europe - G's great-grandmother was actually Swiss and lived in a small village called Vinelz before immigrating to the US. Unfortunately, G is two generations too far away to get a Swiss passport.
Vinelz is not far from the capital of Bern and is only a couple of hours away from Geneva. G took the day off and we finally made our way to the official village record keeper's office to see what they knew about her. Our Swiss-German speaking friend, Mrs. Kofi (and baby Els) was nice enough to come along as our interpreter.
The record keeper was really nice and so helpful. He actually had the hand written documents in a big book that recorded G's great-grandmother, her parents, and even her grandparents, as well as all the siblings of all those folks. In true Swiss style, the book was very well organized with the dates for birth, baptism, confirmation, "copulation" (or marriage), and death that dated back to the mid-1800's. It was really fantastic to see the original handwritten documents. We were even given a paper that translated the old Swiss German Alphabet into modern text which is really helpful in deciphering some of the writing.
After getting copies of all the documents we drove around the village (which took all of 3 minutes), took some pictures, and grabbed a snack from a local restaurant. It was a great day! Now we have one more link to the past and have discovered a wonderful little village in the heart of Switzerland.
Vinelz town crest
The village church which was there when G's great-grandmother lived in Vinelz
The bear of Bern (which is in the same canton or state)
Typical house in Vinelz
We finally had time to investigate one of our best leads in Europe - G's great-grandmother was actually Swiss and lived in a small village called Vinelz before immigrating to the US. Unfortunately, G is two generations too far away to get a Swiss passport.
Vinelz is not far from the capital of Bern and is only a couple of hours away from Geneva. G took the day off and we finally made our way to the official village record keeper's office to see what they knew about her. Our Swiss-German speaking friend, Mrs. Kofi (and baby Els) was nice enough to come along as our interpreter.
The record keeper was really nice and so helpful. He actually had the hand written documents in a big book that recorded G's great-grandmother, her parents, and even her grandparents, as well as all the siblings of all those folks. In true Swiss style, the book was very well organized with the dates for birth, baptism, confirmation, "copulation" (or marriage), and death that dated back to the mid-1800's. It was really fantastic to see the original handwritten documents. We were even given a paper that translated the old Swiss German Alphabet into modern text which is really helpful in deciphering some of the writing.
After getting copies of all the documents we drove around the village (which took all of 3 minutes), took some pictures, and grabbed a snack from a local restaurant. It was a great day! Now we have one more link to the past and have discovered a wonderful little village in the heart of Switzerland.
Vinelz town crest
The village church which was there when G's great-grandmother lived in Vinelz
The bear of Bern (which is in the same canton or state)
Typical house in Vinelz
posted by Swiss Miss | 16:09
1 Comments:
HI! Just dropped in to Wish you a Happy NEw YEAR! Hope all is well in Beautiful CH!
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