Shared Photo: Charles Allenbach Birth Certificate

+10 votes
162 views

I wanted to share this family photo of Charles Allenbach with the community. Location: La Chaux-de-Fonds, Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Date: 11 Apr 1884. My great-great-grandfather Charles was actually born on 10 April 1884. His parents were unable to get to the registrar in time due to a snowstorm, so his birth was recorded the following day. 
500px-Allenbach-34-1.jpg
Click here for the image details page or here for the full-sized version (1450 x 1084).

WikiTree profile: Charles Allenbach
in Photos by Bekka Gilbert G2G1 (1.6k points)

5 Answers

+9 votes

Hi Bekka,

Thanks for sharing!

A quick check resulted in a number of Grossenbacher entries for Trachselwald, Bern, which is less than nine Kilometers from Hasle bei Burgdorf. I didn't find the exact names in that beautiful certificate, but perhaps that will nonetheless give you a lead if you are still working on the Jacob Grossenbacher/ Anna Reyner branch. Here are some links:

Trachselwald, Schweiz nach Hasle bei Burgdorf, Schweiz - Google Maps  

Family Page: Grossenbacher, Elisabeth (hfls.ch)

Best of Luck - and thanks again for sharing!

by GM Garrettson G2G6 Mach 3 (34.7k points)
I've been at a brick wall with those lines amongst my tree. FamilySearch and Ancestry don't have the records and the Swiss archives didn't have much to tell me when I emailed them last year. However, they had a plethora of information on my Allenbach line. Led me all the way back to a 1630s grandpa who was a governor of Adelboden. I'm still gathering my sources to put what I have on here notated correctly.

How is your German? If you can communicate (perhaps with help from an online translator like DeepL) then you might want to contact the genealogists at GENEAL. I have found them to be very helpful.

GENEAL-FORUM - Persönlicher Bereich - Registrieren

I'm still learning the basics on Babbel  but I usually use a translate service when I send my emails. I'll definitely look into them.

Hi Bekka
Yes, I also recommend Deepl for text translations, it's much better than google translate. But you can also post at Geneal-Forum in English, because we can use Deepl too laugh.

+6 votes
What a great piece of history Bekka. Thank you for sharing it and the extra information as well.
by Marty Franke G2G6 Pilot (794k points)
+8 votes

For Switzerland, you need to know the "Heimatort" (place of origin), because it remained the same place even if they moved to another town. All the birth, marriage and death records were and are also registered at the Heimatort. Since 1875, the civil registry offices are in charge, and before 1875 the churches officially registered b / m / d. Some municipalities started early with family registers (in Canton Bern also called "Bürgerrödel" - "Bürger" means citizen).
So your next step would be to get the page of Daniel Eduard Allenbach and Anna Grossenbacher in the Heimatort Adelboden. The family registers are often sorted by marriage date of the couple ("before 1881" for the couple above), and the registers have an index. So it shouldn't be that difficult to find their page. The family registers always have references to the pages of the sons and of the parents of the husband, which makes research very easy.
Difficulties: you would need a permit to get copies for the years 1875-1929. Before 1875, no permit is needed. Of course the permit is quite expensive and copies cost a fee too. I don't know it they would send you a scan - I only got paper copies a few years ago, and I also had to tell them the exact volume and page numer to get copies.
Next difficulty is that the family registers are of course not kept at one single archive, but at the regional civil registry office. Adelboden and Hasle bei Rüegsau are not in the same, but at least the permit is for the whole Canton of Berne.
Depending on the Heimatort, some family registers only started in mid 19th century, while some were written backdated to mid 18th century.
So you might need a professional genealogist for this task. But as you already have quite some information, it hopefully wouldn't be too expenisive to hire one.

Then, when you get back further than family registers exist, you will need the church records. Also here it depends on the Heimatort / municipality, but often they started in late 16th century or 17th century. Here, you should always find the birth / marriage / death at the location of happening, but also at the Heimatort. Sometimes you will need to look at the "Auswärtige" or "Augsburger" books, where those not living in the Heimatort were recorded seperately.
Nearly all church books of Canton of Berne are published online at the Staatsarchiv Bern.

I hope this helps.

Ps: what a great birth record! Thank you for sharing!

by I. Caruso G2G6 Mach 9 (94.0k points)

Oh, and those are the surnames and Heimatorte you are looking for:
- Allenbach, Heimatort Adelboden (Canton of Berne)
- Tschäppät (with ä, not a) - absolutely only Heimatort in whole Switzerland is Bözingen in Canton of Berne. This also means that all Swiss Tschäppät are related to each other (might be a good One Name Study? smiley)
- Grossenbacher, Heimatort Hasle bei Burgdorf (Canton of Berne)
- Reyner - this is not a Swiss surname, at least there are no fitting Heimatorte for this surname. See world map at forebears.io.

Wow!! I was wondering how to research some of my family from Switzerland, and your post is amazingly helpful.
Thank you so much for this! I also have a copy of Daniel's birth record as well. It looks slightly different but thanks to my great-grandaunt Edna, she wrote in English next to everything so I know what everything says. I recently inherited her probate documents and estate inventory and it showed she owned a TON of French and Swiss resources. It took me 2 days to upload every page to her profile I have on Ancestry. I'll do my best to add everything to her profile on here as well and to update Daniel's WT page with his birth record if I haven't already. The lines of the women have been the hardest but hopefully the online archives will be of some use for me. Aunt Edna's research notes mentioned all of the Allenbach archives are held in Bern so I've emailed them several times over the past year with no responses. Fingers crossed I can make some headway online to show my dad more about his mom's paternal side since Nanna's father died in a work accident just after she was conceived so people often have her listed under her adopted/step-father and not her biological father.
+5 votes

That's a great certificate you have. Based on the information there and on the info already in WikiTree, I have taken the liberty to append your WikiTree pages of Christine Augsburger, Johannes Allenbach, Anna/Anne Beyner (not Reyner) and Jacob Grossenbacher, including their respective places of origin (Heimatorte): Langnau im Emmental, Adelboden, Schüpfen and Hasle bei Burgdorf. Since these towns are all in the Canton of Berne, their church records (and their parents records) can be found on the homepage of the Staatsarchiv Bern (https://www.staatsarchiv.sta.be.ch/en/start/fuer-private/familienforschung.html). There you find some information on how to do it, but be aware that the church records are in German, and they are handwritten (and some church people were awful scribblers). Good luck.

by Samuel Zschokke G2G3 (3.2k points)
+2 votes

Thank you for sharing!yesyes

by David Draper G2G Astronaut (3.8m points)

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