Swiss genealogies on Family Tree at familysearch.org

Julius Billeters notes 

Since most of the Swiss genealogies are the result of Julius Billeter's research, the same inherit problems I found in my research, will be found in most genealogies on Family Search Family Tree. It is estimated that Julius Billeter research resulted in the submission of over 1 million names during his career as a genealogist. The genealogies are submissions made pre 1960’s, and many of the genealogies on Family Tree are unchanged from those submissions. Family Tree has the largest collection of Swiss genealogies in the world. For those of us with Bernese ancestry it just became a lot easier to create an accurate genealogy. Now with the click of the mouse one can view the same parish registers that Julius Billeter used to compile all those genealogies.

The Stettler’s of Bolligen on the Family Tree is the result of research conducted by Julius Billiter in the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s. Ernest Stettler and others paid Julius Billeter money over the years to gather genealogies of particular families. Billeter sent them over 15,000 names over the years. Now we have a snap shot of the research on the FamilyTree that is a result of the submissions made to the church as a result of Julis Billeters research. I have gone through my various lines adding sources, and I found errors, omissions, and duplication of submissions. I have added over 100 new people to the genealogy.

The problem is twofold; how Billeter recorded the information and how it was submitted to the church. The family group sheets which were started in the early 1940’s contained no place to enter the death or marriage place of children. On Family Tree rarely is there a death place, and the marriage place is not recorded or the place can be a gemeinde, not a kirchgemeinde. When I started researching 6 months ago I had the Maurer family from Zollikofen. Every records says they were born and married in Zollikofen; however, I could find no entry in the catalog referring to Zollikofen. Zollikofen is a gemeinde in the kirchgemeinde of Bremgarten, so all the births, deaths, and marriages will be recorded there. Anyone who lived in Zollikofen or had a hiemat there will be found in the church books of Bremgarten.

While all the dates are quite accurate, the place names are based on the hiemat or community from which they originate from. The Frauchiger family from Eriswil who were living in Busswil bei Melchnau as early as 1740 are still recorded as being born in Eriswil, or Wyssachengraben which is a gemeinde of Eriswil, in the 1850’s. People moved around often, yet this is not reflected in the genealogies. One would think that they lived in one gemeinde for centuries without change. Typically they did not live far from there hiemat.

This article focuses on Bern canton. With the Church books of Bern Canton online now it is possible to compare, correct, and source the genealogies on Family Search Family Tree. Filmed copies of the church books were made available in the early 1990’s at familysearch (before computers); thereafter, digital copies of the church books were made available on CD. Now the church books are online, 500 thousand pages worth.

Summary of original genealogies on Family Tree

• Perhaps we should call it, Billeter's genealogy
• people are recorded as being born in there hiemat exclusively
• marriages are associated with a persons hiemat rather than where it took place
• most deaths and many marriages have no place name attached
• errors or omissions exist, but only will be discovered by reviewing the church books
• Deaths records are marginalized, valuable information can be found in death records
• Getauft and geboren dates are interchangeable

Gemeinde, Kirchgemeinde, Switzerland

I have found a few very useful websites in sorting out the community where people lived as well as a description of the gemeinde or community of each place in Switzerland. As an example I will focus on the gemeinde and kirchgemeinde of Melchnau in Bern Canton. The gemeinde of Melchnau was 4 square miles and the kirchgemeinde was 10 square miles and included the gemeindes of Busswil, Gondiswil, and Reisiswil. To determine which surnames that belonged to each gemeinde, hiemat, or community go to the website, Register of Swiss Surnames. In german is its called, Familiennamebuch der Schweiz. The kirchgemiende of Melchnau is where the church records were kept for the 10 square mile area. The parish registers are on film, CD, and online at familysearch. While baptisms may have taken place in the hiemat or community, the marriages would have taken place in the parish church in Melchanu. Or as I have learned they may have went to a nearby parish church or kirchgemeinde to get married.
To get an idea about the gemeinde or community where they lived go to the website, Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz; type a place name in the search box (Melchnau, Busswil, Gondiswil, and Reisiswil), and then click the link to the place. It will come up in german. Copy the text into Google translate and in seconds you will have an English translation. These communities or gemeindes were in the district of Arawangen but now in the district of Oberaargau. Wikipedia provides details about each place.

138 year Closure Period for Records in Switzerland

Now we know that the family lived in Recherswil we can look at marriages of the children. The seven girls in the family would have married men from the area, so they would not be found in Affoltern registers, except for their marriages. The women took the hiemat of their husbands. It doesn't matter anyway. In Switzerland the closure period for records begins in 1876. This means that those who married after 1876, there is no marriage record available for viewing; therefore, all those young people who married post 1876 cannot be traced to the next generation. It is not possible to trace post 1876 descendants in Switzerland. When I was at the zivilstandsamt in Tracheswald some years ago I was able to get the familienschein for the Christen family. The familienscheins are limited to direct line ancestors; although, I’m not sure how they police this standard since I produced family group sheets of the family as evidence of my connection. I would assume this 138 year closure period is why so few Swiss genealogies can be found, and those found with people after 1876 can be considered unreliable since no records can be used to verify the accuracy.
I used to think a hundred year closure period was harsh. When they do change the closure period to 1900 it will take many years for the records in the form of microfilm or online images to become accessible. Probably after 2025.

Did your Swiss ancestor live in their hiemat?

The concept of recording the hiemat of a family for a birthplace rather than where they lived or born is and was a wide spread practice in Swiss research. It is for one simple reason, their records were kept there; however, a record was kept where they lived as well. As time marched on more and more people were no longer living in their hiemat. I have wondered how Anna Christen (1861-1917) from Affoltern met and married Gottfried Jaggi (1860-1918) in 1883 in Kriegstetten, canton of Solothurn. The family group sheets of the past provide no clues. I followed the paper trail (parish registers) of Anna’s family from when her parents, Peter Christen and Maria Bürki, married in 1860 in Affoltern im Emmental. They had 11 childern from 1860 till 1881. They never lived in Affoltern im Emmental after they married. For 9 years after their marriage they lived about 8 miles north of Affoltern in Rohrbach parish, and many years in the town of Lemiswil. About 1870 is when they arrived in Recherswil. Both Anna and Peter died there.

Distances: Affoltern im Emmental to Rohrbach – 8 miles; Rohrbach to Lemiswil – 3 miles; Lemiswil to Recherswil – 12 miles Distances

Family group sheet prepared in the 1950’s by Gottfried Jaggi

Jaggi Stettler website; Peter Christen and Anna Bürki

A picture of the baptism record of Anna Christen (1861-1917) (#29)
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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.

William Bye moved to Blythburgh in 1811

It’s not often that we get a detailed picture of an ancestor’s circumstance. The result of a court case involving his son, John Bye, resulted in the publication of his circumstances in some law books in 1825. These law publications were put online by Google as an eBook. By making a simple Google search I found the court case. Everyone had a parish of settlement. Agricultural laborers were often out of work for some months during the year. Only the parish that they were settled in gave relief. This resulted in people when in hard times were physically removed to a settled parish. The law kept people close to the parish they were born in, thus allowing us to find families in the or near the same place for many generations. In 1824, John Bye living in Blythburgh with a wife and four children where his father lived was seeking poor relief. He was born in 1798 in Chillesford. Under the clause of ‘Hiring and Service,’ under parish law, the churchwardens were through some confusion, actually did have John Bye and his family removed back to Chillesford. A year later the case was overturned in the courts and he was allowed back to Blythburgh. He never did go back to Blythburgh. In another blog entry I’ll explain what happened to his family. Even though the case is about John Bye, the published case focuses on how William Bye came to be in Blythburgh. Was Blythburgh William Bye’s settled parish?

“William Bye, the pauper’s father, being a married man, and settled in Chillesford, let himself to Mr. Taylor, of Blythburgh, better than fourteen years ago, (about 1811) as a shepherd; he was to have for the first year, forty shillings for wages, ten coombs of wheat and two of barley, produced on the farm, the going of thirty breeding ewes, worth 10l. a year, and a cottage in Blythburgh, rent free, worth three guineas a year. W. Bye continued with Mr. Taylor for fourteen years upon the same term… …If W. Bye had not had the cottage, he would have more wages, and it was convenient for him as a shepherd, as it was on the spot. W. Bye hired every year one or two pages, over whom Mr. Taylor had no control, and about nine years ago, when one Jarvis, one of the pages, was to leave, W. Bye, about a week before old Midsummer, agreed with his son, the pauper, who was at that time nineteen years of age, and unemancipated, to serve him for a year, from old Michaelmas to old Michaelmas, in Jarvis’s place, at the same wages 8l. a year, which time the pauper served, and slept in Blythburgh, being then unmarried, in his father’s house. “
There must be some originally documents from which this case was decided and created that would provide even more details, but I have not been able to find anything online. What biographical information!

William Bye 1761 to 1831 - Suffok, England

I have recently started researching William Bye. Mary Bye his daughter is who married Philip Scoggins in 1814 in Badingham. The only clue we have as to where she was born is the 1851 census of Badingham. It says she was born in Orford parish in about 1791. From looking at the available records it becomes apparent that the surname Bye is not very common in East Suffolk. It was quite easy to identify him in the records. He married Mary Saunders in 1791 and the next year, 1792, she was born in Orford. He had 3 more children with Mary until she died in 1797. He then married Martha Randall in 1798 and had five more children. He is found living in the parishes of Orford, Sudbourne, and Chillesford between 1771 and 1811.

Ipswich Journal February 3, 1802
To be SOLD by AUCTION; By John Ashley Rogers, On Saturday, the 17th day of July, at the Chequers in Sudbourn, at Five o'clock in the afternoon, A FREEHOLD Brick and Tiled Dwelling House, situated in Chillesford street; comprising two lower rooms and two comfortable chambers, and a large piece of garden ground, paled in. The premises are in most excellent repair, and well supplied with water; are now in the occupation of Wm. Bye, the owner. Possession may be had at Michaelmas next, For further particulars apply to the auctioneer, Orford. [Michaelmas is 29 September]
We find some valuable clues about William when he sold his house in Chillesford. He lived in a comfortable house and was the actual the owner of his property. His occupation appears to be farmer and shepherd. With the indexing of baptisms by the Suffolk Family History Society it looks likely he will soon be identified in the parish registers. There are numerous articles in the Ipswich papers for those selling land. Findmypast has recently made available these papers. Also the Ipswich Journal is available at the Family history Library 1800 to 1900 on another website.