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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: geenz on Tuesday 21 March 23 15:07 GMT (UK)

Title: Switzerland records
Post by: geenz on Tuesday 21 March 23 15:07 GMT (UK)
I have a ancestor from Switzerland (born around 1859) and I wonder what it is like to try to do family research in Switzerland.  I am doing research online as I am based in NZ.  How easy or challenging is it?
Title: Re: Switzerland records
Post by: Girl Guide on Tuesday 21 March 23 20:08 GMT (UK)
No idea as to how easy/difficult it is as I have no connection to Switzerland.  Googling comes up with quite a few websites relating to Switzerland that may be worth exploring. Whether they cover the dates that are of interest to you can only be discovered if you explore the websites.
Title: Re: Switzerland records
Post by: KGarrad on Tuesday 21 March 23 20:12 GMT (UK)
I think you need to know in which canton they lived?
See: https://familytreemagazine.com/heritage/swiss/swiss-genealogy-resources/
Title: Re: Switzerland records
Post by: GrahamSimons on Tuesday 21 March 23 23:03 GMT (UK)
Cyndi's List often helps if you are looking for something or somewhere unfamiliar:
https://www.cyndislist.com/switzerland/
Title: Re: Switzerland records
Post by: martin hooper on Wednesday 22 March 23 11:06 GMT (UK)
familysearch has a lot of switzerland records. I found some of my relatives births in the 1870s.

Martin
Title: Re: Switzerland records
Post by: geenz on Thursday 23 March 23 16:59 GMT (UK)
He was in Canton Bern. 

Thank you for that information.
Title: Re: Switzerland records
Post by: Gibel on Thursday 23 March 23 20:56 GMT (UK)
Swiss people relate to their Canton of Origin (I think that is what it is called) which is not necessarily where they were born or live. Look up the surname in

https://hls-dhs-dss.ch

Title: Re: Switzerland records
Post by: miracula on Tuesday 04 April 23 22:35 BST (UK)
This is the site to find the Heimatort (place of citizenship) which is connected to each surname in Switzerland > https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/famn/

Here the link to the digitized church records (Kirchenbücher) of the county Bern (Kt. Bern) published by the countyarchive Bern > https://www.staatsarchiv.sta.be.ch/de/start/fuer-private/familienforschung.html
Title: Re: Switzerland records
Post by: geenz on Wednesday 05 April 23 00:51 BST (UK)
Thank you for that very helpful information.
Title: Re: Switzerland records
Post by: miracula on Wednesday 05 April 23 06:24 BST (UK)
Just an important note: familysearch has a lot of wrong transcriptions of the handwritten Kirchenbücher. The reason is the unknown names of people and places if somebody is doing the transcription who is English speaking! The best is to verify the information you got from familysearch with the primary source! The other problem is that there was a period the entries in the Kirchenbücher for women surnames got a special ending e.g. Hauserin, Müllerin, Lehmännin…