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OUR GENEALOGICAL RESEARCH SERVICES

SwissGenealogy.com (in German: Genealogie Zentrum Worb) is located in Worb - a town about ten miles from Bern - and has the goal of making Swiss genealogical records more accessible to Americans and Swiss alike. Our initial concentration is almost exclusively on Canton Bern, which is by far the most important Swiss canton for American researchers since more than 75% of Swiss immigrants to America came from old Canton Bern (then including Canton Bern, Canton Aargau, and Canton Jura), but in future we hope to offer records from all parts of Switzerland.

SwissGenealogy.com offers researchers both new services and old ones. But first, our resources:

We have established in Worb one of the larger private genealogical libraries around; with more then 12,000 volumes covering many parts of America, combined with strength in parish registers of the British Isles and books on the German-speaking areas of Europe. We have copies of the old church books of all of Canton Bern’s 400 Gemeinden as well as many other Swiss records. Our headquarters in Worb are in the spacious Bauernhaus pictured on the opening page of this web site.

We speak English, my mother tongue, as well as having access to researchers who speak German and Bärndütsch.

Our services combine the old and the new:

For researchers who prefer Do-It-Yourself genealogy, we offer books and CDs which will enable you to transcribe and translate church records written in German, to research most of the published genealogical records of Switzerland, to work with all of the pre-1876 Bernese church books, and to place your Swiss ancestors in historical context.

For those genealogists, whether amateur or advanced, who intend to hire professionals in America to do this work, we offer an Introductory Guide to Swiss Genealogy together with other books which will bring you up to speed on Switzerland and on what information is available, so that you can work more closely with your chosen professional. The more you know about Swiss genealogy and what you want from it, the better your relationship with your professional researcher is going to be.

For those wishing to hire us, we offer the staff and expertise reflected in the many books on German-speaking genealogy which I have edited or written in the more than 35 years that I have been a Certified Genealogist. We can do anything from looking up births, deaths, and marriages to compiling complete family genealogies, including full publication services. In practical terms, if you are interested in any events after 1 January 1876, you should have that work done by the appropriate Zivilstandsamt as discussed in the Introductory Guide to Swiss Genealogical Research. Since we have a minimum charge of 3 hours of work at CHF 80 per hour, if your interest is in a single birth record or something of that limited nature, you will do best to purchase the appropriate CD from us and then do the research yourself.

What we don’t do is arrange travel services for Americans visiting Switzerland. For that we suggest you contact one of the Swiss travel bureaus.

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