Sunday, August 22, 2010

Genealogy Research

Bernadette Grob-Oertig informed me that the microfilm records she accessed at the Kanton Thurgau Staatsarchiv also exist at the Mormon archive in Utah.  Anyone can do research at the Mormon archive.  It would be possible for any of us to confirm the work done so far and to possibly expand the research. 

Knowing that would not make the task easy for the reasons I noted on my blog titled A Productive Summer - Major Revelations.

A Productive Summer - Swiss National Museum

Battle scene model at Swiss National Museum
On Friday, July 16 Kathy and I visited the Swiss National Museum in Zurich and spent nearly 5 hours looking at exhibits and learning about Swiss history and culture. A few bits of information have stuck with me.

My understanding is there was a lot of conflict in Switzerland during the 1400’s, 1500’s and 1600’s. Numerous wars were fought to secure the power of one leader or another. A civil war was fought in 1847 and in 1848 Switzerland drafted the constitution which governs the country today. Detailed maps in the exhibits illustrate the regions or cantons taking certain religious or political stands during each period of conflict. It seems the Thurgau and St. Gallen regions where the Staeheli’s lived largely remained outside of the wars and were committed to the Catholic Church. I’m sure my Swiss relatives and friends will explain where I have misunderstood Swiss history.

There was a wooden dining table in one exhibit with bowls carved into the table surface. This was common in poor families. In the early 1800's a common type of work done by poor people was making yarn with spinning wheels because spinning wheels were relatively inexpensive. The yarn would then be used to produce linens on hand looms.  By 1850 weaving became a factory industry. Evidence is clear that some in the Staeheli family worked in making embroidery. It has been said that Maria Staeheli, my great grandmother, wanted to leave Switzerland so her daughters would not have to work in factories.

Labor strikes in the early 1900’s were problematic for Swiss workers and business so in 1937 labor strikes were made illegal with arbitration required to settle disputes. This has contributed to stability and social well being in Switzerland. Suffrage for Swiss women was approved in 1971 but it was only in 1990 that the last holdout canton was forced to introduce women’s suffrage.

In 2002 Switzerland joined the United Nations.

A Productive Summer - Winden

Rolf Blust
I am backtracking with this entry.

On Tuesday July 13, Kathy and I scheduled a train trip from Bern to Zurich. Our alarm was set for 6:30 AM so we would get an early start. After breakfast we walked briskly to the Lion Monument in Bern. Kathy is fascinated with this lion carved into the rock wall and the story behind it. During the French Revolution in 1792 the Swiss Guards protecting the French king were killed or executed protecting him and the Royal family. The Lion has a broken spear in his back and an expression of agony on his face immortalizing the dead Swiss. It is very moving.

We got on the 9:35 train to Zurich and settled in to very comfortable first class seats. My experience last summer was that the trains are seldom full and that is the case this summer. It is possible to take over 4 seats facing each other and have a comfortable nest with a table for computer work. The ride to Zurich took less than an hour and the walk to our hotel took 15 minutes. Since we were early it was not possible to check in so we returned to the station to take the train to Winden. We got on the train to Weinfelden where we would change trains. In Weinfelden we got a train to Romanshorn which has a lovely setting on the Bodensee. From Romanshorn it was a short ride to Haggenschwil-Winden station where we met Tienne. The station in Winden is only a stop and the ticket office is now called the Hair Station, a beauty salon. Near the station there are two houses and two industrial businesses. We have evidence the Staeheli’s came from Kuegeliswinden which is now Winden.

Tienne arrived by car and drove us several miles to the home of Rolf Blust a retired teacher who has written a book, soon to be published, about the history of Winden. For about two hours Mr. Blust gave us local history and his assessment of tracing Staeheli family ancestors. A sticking point for us had been finding records for several decades after Napolean took control of Switzerland around 1798. Tienne believes we will be successful looking into church records of that era (this was the case the next day in St. Gallen).

The only significance of Winden, known as Kuegeliswinden in earlier times, is that it was a border town on the road to St. Gallen and served as a toll station. A new train station was built there in 1910. There was a local dispute over naming the station. The residents of Haggenschwil wanted it named for their town (even though the station was in Kuegeliswinden). The railroad would not print a name as long as Haggenschwil-Kuegeliswinden on a train schedule. So the name of the Kuegelin family was dropped leaving the name used today. Winden means windy.

Maps from earlier times show a cluster of 16 or so houses with some likely occuppied by our Staeheli family. Tienne knows that three farms near the village of Winden today are operated by families named Staeheli. We thanked Mr. Blust for his information and Tienne drove us back to the station. We agreed to meet again tomorrow in St. Gallen and Tienne left for her drive home.
Winden Train Station

A Productive Summer - Major Revelations

Thursday, July 15, Kathy decided to stay in Zurich so I took the 8:07 train from Zurich to Frauenfeld (this means Field of Women in German). It was a short 3 block walk to the Kanton Thurgau Staatsarchiv where I was greeted by Tienne and Bernadette Grob-Oertig who were already at work selecting microfilms to search for Staeheli family records.

It should be noted that genealogists worldwide are indebted to the Catholic Church and the many priests who over the centuries created and maintained records of births, baptisms, marriages and deaths for the residents in the communities of their churches. As well, the Mormon Church is to be credited for locating these records and making them accessible to the public by microfilming and digitizing them. The key to successful family research is having a professional who is skilled in reading the documents and who knows the culture and history of the region being researched.

Lorenz Staeheli in the Church Records - click to enlarge

Today was an exceptionally successful day with the result that we have evidence tracing the Staeheli’s to the village of Erdhausen near Egnach with a marriage record dated 1653 and a birth record dated 1657. There is a continuous line of Staeheli’s from the present day until then. It was the teamwork of Tienne and Bernadette that produced this result. I observed them in awe for five hours as they scanned the records, found critical documents, made copies and placed ancestors in context. The limiting factor to further research is there are no readily available church records prior to these dates.

This is not work to be done by amateurs. Hand written records from only a hundred years ago can be very difficult to read and interpret. Going back two, three or four centuries the style of writing differs, the writing style of a particular priest could be neat or not, spelling of family names was not standardized but based on how the pronunciation of the name sounded to the writer and the shapes of letters of the alphabet were not standard over time.  Some family names were Latinized by the priest recorder. Tienne commented that at a point in the study of documents she could no longer read the records and she speaks, reads and writes German. Bernadette possesses a unique set of skills enabling her to get to the heart of the work and ferret out the desired information.
Tienne and Bernadette engaged in research

Tienne now has hard copies of all documents leading back to 1653. She will organize this information and add it to her family tree. Eventually this tree will be available to all Staeheli’s. I am indebted to Tienne for her diligence with this project. Her energy and enthusiasm as well as her insights to know what must be done and her knowledge of Swiss history, culture, language and society have advanced our understanding of the Staeheli family enormously. Success could not have been possible without her.

Our work at the archive was done around 3:30 and by 4 we were enjoying a drink at a nearby restaurant where Bernadette loaded family tree software on Tienne’s computer and mine, too. She was then able to transfer Tienne’s family data to my computer with ease. Bernadette left and Tienne offered to drive me back to Zurich on her way home. We stopped at the Staehli Bakery on the way to her car then hit the road for Zurich.
Tienne at the Staehli Bakery

An hour later Tienne dropped me off at the Zurich train station and I walked to the hotel. Kathy and I shared the events of the day then had dinner. We took a stroll through the old town and returned to our room to get a good night’s sleep.

What I understand of our family is that for many generations we had been farmers in northeast Switzerland near the Bodensee. In the mid 1600’s we were in Erdhausen and the earliest record is of the marriage of Jakob Staheli to Maria on October 25, 1653.  A reasonable estimate is that Jakob was born around 1630. Over time the family moved south to Kuegeliswinden (now Winden) then further to the area near St. Gallen. Events provided our family with the means and motivation to emigrate to America. This big picture has substantially satisfied my desire to know my roots. Even though there are many details to add to the story for me this had been another great day in Switzerland.

A Productive Summer - continued

On Wednesday, July 14 Kathy and I left for St. Gallen on the 8:09 train. This is a fairly fast train which is very comfortable. There were several stops before St. Gallen and we arrived at 9:15. After getting a map from Tourist Information we walked to the Staatsarchiv. Tienne met us as we approached the door and we went in together.

This place is well secured and many doors are locked. To leave the document area you must exit through a door locked from the inside. We put our bags in a locker and met with Marcel Muller who helped me last summer. His colleague, Patric Schnitzer also greeted us and we discussed a plan for the day. Marcel led us to a room with a very long table with documents laid out. Most obvious was a map of Guebsensee which was about 4 feet long.
Patric, Tienne, Kathy and Marcel

Marcel had a hand written copy of the sales contract between Kubel Elektrik and Albert Staeheli with a typed copy easier to read. He went through each point of the contract explaining its significance. Attached to the contract were some amendments or points of clarification. We looked at the map dated 1898 prepared by Kubel with excellent detail of Guebsenmoos and the proposed Guebsensee illustrating where shorelines would be. Tienne identified the property lines and Marcel noted from the contract who the neighboring property owners were. The Staeheli house and barn were shown on the map. From the contract and map it was clear Albert Staeheli owned two parcels separated by the property of another farmer. A road or trail crossed the neighbor’s land allowing Albert access to both of his acreages. There was a bridge on the road that Albert and his neighbor maintained jointly. The map and contract are a goldmine of information. Again, Patric and Marcel have done extreme detective work with excellent results.

Marcel lead Tienne and me to meet Ueli Risch, a retired SAK executive who is reviewing historical records from the early days of Kubel Elektrik. Mr. Risch had found the contract of Albert Staeheli after conversation with Marcel about our family research. Marcel showed me the stacks in the document storage room where the Kubel files are kept while Mr. Risch does his work. There are hundreds of thousands of documents. Some have been processed but most have not. It was serendipity that he spotted the contract among the documents. Mr. Risch also had some photos from the construction of the powerplant.
Marcel and Ueli

It was time for lunch so we took a break and walked to a nearby restaurant serving typical Swiss dishes. It was a warm, sunny day suitable for outdoor dining. For just under two hours we enjoyed fine Swiss cuisine and talked about contemporary life, politics, religion, medicine, travel and salaries among other topics. We learned that both Marcel and Patric have been to the U.S. Marcel studied in Nebraska for 10 months and experienced the U.S. medical system when he broke his leg playing soccer. After military service Patric started in San Francisco and drove a rental car through the southwest to LA and north along the coast highway back to San Francisco.

Back at the archive Tienne researched Staeheli’s by accessing microfilm records. Marcel and I researched property records kept by fire insurance companies for mention of the Staeheli’s. Briefly we attempted to locate a photo of the Staeheli house in Guebsenmoos believed to exist in an encyclopedia or publication about St. Gallen. This was determined to be looking for the needle in the haystack. We resumed our study of fire insurance records. I use “we” even though it was Marcel doing the looking and me standing by. His detective skills in overdrive, Marcel had three or four large volumes open and was flipping pages like Superman. Suddenly he exclaimed it was time for a “high five”. Success! He confirmed with Patric and affirmed we had the story of the Staeheli house in Guebsenmoos. It is fascinating but you will have to wait for it to come out in book form. Just kidding… I will update the website soon.

Kathy and I needed to return to Zurich so I collected all the documents Marcel had prepared and we left the archive feeling it had been another eminently successful day of discovery. Back in Zurich we had dinner and showered. It had been the hottest day of the year in Switzerland and sure felt that way even though we had spent most of the day underground. I called Tienne to confirm our meeting in Frauenfeld tomorrow.

Tienne shared joy for her discovery of our great, great, great grandfather during her record search today. Wow! It just kept getting better.
Staeheli Property in Gubsenmoos before flooding Reservoir
Click on images to enlarge them.

A Productive Summer

Much has happened since my last posting.  My wife, Kathy and I traveled to Europe and spent more than a week in Switzerland.  Our first meeting with my cousin Tienne Staeheli was at Ballenberg Outdoor Historical Museum on Friday, July 9.  This is where I fell and broke out several teeth on August 1, 2009.  Tienne met us with a happy greeting when we arrived by train in Brienz and drove us to the ticket office at Ballenberg.  She informed us it was the hottest day of the year so we would need to pace ourselves. 
Tom and Hans

First we met Hans Uhle, the man who took me to the medical clinic in Briez after my accident.  Tienne translated and communicated my gratitude to Hans who was pleased that I had recovered and appreciated that we had returned to Ballenberg.  The remainder of the day we walked from village to village in the park while Tienne described details of the houses and barns and placed them in the context of their origins in the geography of Switzerland. We finished our Ballenberg visit looking at homes from the St. Gallen region where the Staeheli's lived. Tienne then drove us to Brienz to see traditional buildings in the center of town. 

Tienne and Kathy at Ballenberg

Ballenberg

At times during our visit Tienne and I discussed the progress of our family research and priorities for continued investigation. Also of interest to me was that Tienne owns two homes which she is renovating. The home she and her children occupy was originally built in the 1930’s and has undergone significant upgrading which she has had a hand in directing and managing. Her other home located in southern Switzerland was first built in 1610. This home will have upgrades as Tienne has time and resources to do the work. Certainly she knows traditional Swiss homes and has a clear vision of how proper restoration and remodeling should be done.

We agreed to meet the next Wednesday in St. Gallen at the Staatsarchiv.  It had been a thoroughly enjoyable day.
The Rock Where I Broke My Teeth in 2009