Excursions in Switzerland

A small church outside Zurich, on a snowy Sunday morning

Greetings from Switzerland! Already 2015 promises to be a good travel year.  Spent New Year’s Day on a flight to Zürich, and after surviving a serious cold, have been doing some exploring.

One of my first excursions was to find and visit Lengnau, Switzerland, the birthplace of my great-grandfather.  My family name of Kaferly is so rare, I just assume any Kaferly I meet is related to me.  However, genealogical records for the Kaferly family are even rarer, most were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

The Swiss vineyards in hibernation.

In doing some genealogical research on my family name over the past few years, all I was able to uncover using US census records was that my great-grandfather, Joseph Caspar Kaferly, was born around 1850 in Switzerland. With a little more digging, I found his brother’s name, John Baptist, who lived in Sandusky, Ohio, and their father, John Joseph Kaferly, who also lived in Sandusky; the country of origin for all three was listed as Switzerland.  I was unable to find the date of their emigration, or from where in Switzerland they came. 

On my first visit to Zürich two years ago, I stopped into the Central Library of Zürich near the campus of the ETH (Eidenössische Technische Hochschule, Switzerland’s MIT, the internationally known university where Albert Einstein once studied). With the help of one of the research librarians, I scanned through volumes of Swiss immigration records, searching for my family name, with no success.  The librarian could find no instance of my last name in the Zurich directory of historical names, and suggested that I write the Swiss National Library for help. 

The answer I received was most encouraging, and explained why I had had no luck thus far.  My family name was derived from “Köferli” or “Koeferli” and I had been looking for records under the wrong spelling.  The National Library search on that spelling indicated the place of origin for my name was the village of Lengnau, in the Canton Aargau, and dated back before the year 1800.  My time in Zürich ended before I could continue with my research, but on this trip I was determined to find out whether Lengnau was truly my great-grandfather’s birthplace. My breakthrough came when I visited the Gemeindehaus at Bad Zurzach, which I knew to be the district center containing all the census records for the surrounding villages, including Lengnau. 

The sleepy farm village of Lengnau, Aargau, Switzerland

A very kind lady at the Gemeindehaus in Bad Zurzach pulled out massive ledger books that were stored in a locked safe, and painstakingly searched the census records (deciphering for me the ancient German “Schrift” writing) for the “Köferli” name. While at first not entirely convinced we had found my great-grandfather, whose name was given as Kaspar Josef Köferli, born 1849, we persisted in identifying other names using the US census records I had for John Baptist, and John Joseph.  The dates matched, so we kept on delving into the past for earlier records, ending with “Johann Baptist Köferli” of Lengnau who was born in 1786 and died in 1843.  Curiously, the information in the column for date of death for my great-great grandfather and his two sons had a notation from 1913 indicating that they had “disappeared” and no further information was available.  That suggested to my helper that they had perhaps emigrated, but with no indication of when or to where.  I felt this evidence supported the idea that that they had in fact emigrated to America.

 

St Martin's church and cemetery in Lengnau, with mistletoe in the trees

Feeling quite confident that I had found my great-grandfather, I located Lengnau on the map, which turned out to be about 35 km northeast of Zürich, just a bit south of the Rhine River across the border from Germany.  Driving to Lengnau was an easy matter, through charming agricultural territory of wooded hills separating snowy wheat fields, grazing cows, with a village here and there, real sleepy winter scenery.  The history of this area is quite ancient; excavations have uncovered Roman villas, the land was once controlled by the Habsburgs, and the regional history parallels the formation of the Swiss Confederacy.  Lengnau lies on a picturesque little stream called the Surb, and has a population of around 2400 people. The largest, most stately building in town is the Jewish synagogue, built around 1846. Turns out that in the 17^th century Lengnau and the neighboring village of Endingen were designated protected villages where Swiss Jews could settle. In fact, Lengnau was the birthplace of Meyer Guggenheim who immigrated to the US in the early 19^th century and founded the famous Guggenheim dynasty.

The Jewish synagogue of Lengnau, a Swiss heritage site of national significance

 

After wandering around this very tiny community, I decided to look in the village cemetery next to the church of St Martin to see whether I could find any tombstones with the name Köferli.  My search was rewarded, and I took a photo of the tombstone of one Josef Köferli, born 1893 and died 1980.  Must be a long-lost cousin.

The grave of Josef Köferli, perhaps a long lost cousin

 

With unanswered questions, such as: what occupation did my ancestors follow (probably farming), what year did they emigrate (my guess is 1853 based on something I found in the US census records), and why they left (I may never know), I have some more digging to do.  My next stop will be a visit to the Canton Aargau government archives to search for Swiss immigration records.  But this has been quite an exciting and interesting experience – at last to see the village where my great-grandfather, Joseph Caspar Kaferly, was born.