Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Swiss Records Online

Researching Swiss ancestry has just become a lot easier. The parish records of canton Bern have been put online at familysearch.org; since 3/4 of my Swiss ancestry is from canton Bern this makes it easy to access the records from home. What makes these records at familysearch so valuable is the ability to link the records to the ancestors in the Family Tree. I have linked over 500 such records to names in the family tree. Now anyone can go to the tree and will find a source with a link to the original document from which the information was obtained. It will take some study of the handwriting to decipher what it says. Since our grandparents came to this country over 100 year ago they have been submitting information and participating in the various genealogical programs by the church. All the submissions of the past have been based on the hiemat or community or parish from which the family originated from many 100’s of years ago. This means that regardless of where they lived in Switzerland a record of a marriage, baptism, or death will be found in one place. Some had not lived in their home parish for decades, but I have found that almost all of them remained in canton Bern. The baptism, marriage, or burial is recorded also where they were living, so there are multiple entries in the registers for one event. It is of value to check all the entries since more information may have been recorded by one parish clerk than the other. By looking at the genealogy of the past one would think that everyone lived in one place. NOTE: If there is no source linked to a person in the Family Tree then add one.

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