Genealogy in Switzerland: A Longenecker Family Search

I recently visited Langnau, Bern, Switzerland and spent two days immersed in all things Langenegger. My wife and I arrived at the Langnau train station on June 25, 2004, exhausted from a long flight from San Francisco. As we exited the train station, we were immediately struck by the unique character of this area.

Outside the train station are the remains of a cobbled street, now patched up by asphalt. Everywhere we looked there were beautiful Swiss houses and buildings, many of them hundreds of years old, and all decorated in bright colors with pink and red begonias placed in planters under each window. As we discovered later, the Emmental is also a wonderland of covered bridges, friendly people, church steeples with clocks and Swiss bells, cow bells jingling, everything you expect Switzerland to be.

As we walked to our hotel in Bareau, we noticed how friendly and courteous the locals are, stopping to allow us to cross the street and smiling as we pass by with a friendly “Hallo” or “Guten Morgen”. The city is dotted with long stone tanks with well water splashing at one end and draining at the other. They look like a stone tank for horses. These are available to anyone who wants a cold drink of well water.

After settling into our room at the Landgasthof Hotel Adler, the owner kindly invited us for a short walk through the countryside, where we saw more beautiful houses and pastures. After we got back we asked some locals in the hotel restaurant about the Langenegger farm and they had a lot of laughs. Turns out there are a lot of Langeneggers there and we didn’t know the names of the people who lived in the original house we came to see.

The hills are about 1200 feet above the valley floor and are incredibly green with grass and wooded areas visible from anywhere in the city. Langnau is small, maybe three or four blocks long, and the hills seem very close. Black and white cows break through vegetation and produce a wonderful jingle as they graze by ringing bells around their necks. The higher pitched bells carried by sheep and goats mix with the noise of cow bells, creating a delightful backdrop to the landscape. This is the last sound we hear as we fall asleep covered in a down quilt on our first night in Langnau.

The birds woke us up to the wonderfully green world that is Langnau in the summer. We enjoyed a wonderful breakfast of homemade bread and jelly provided by our host, Stephen. We were hoping to attend church, but found that our information was incorrect and came too early. Instead, we started our Langnau walking tour early. Langnau is a small town and we walked all the main streets around noon when we took a break for lunch and shared a small cheesecake and apple pie from a little shop near the city center. By this time, the local museum had opened. It is housed in one of the oldest houses in Langnau and is a great opportunity to look inside one of these magnificent buildings and see all the elegant woodwork done by the builders. It is also a large museum with a series of permanent and rotating exhibits depicting the history of Langnau and its residents.

The museum professor has lived in Langnau for 70 years and knows the name Langenegger very well. He quickly found a book containing the emblems of the Langenegger family, one for those in the valley (Langenegg Ey) and one for those up in the hills (Langenegg Unter). She also freely analyzed the name in Lange (Long in English – pronounced ‘Long’ also in German) and negg (hill in English – pronounced ‘neck’ in German). I have not been able to confirm the word ‘negg’ anywhere, but that’s what it said. The book also included a statement, “Ulrich, von Langnau, wanderte 1748 nach Pennsylvanien [USA] Aus (Faust 61) “which roughly translates that Ulrich Langenegger immigrated to Pennsylvania in the United States in 1748. This is our ancestor Ulrich Langenegger Sr. The book does not provide an additional source for this information. On the map, the Langenegg Unter is at only 30 minute walk uphill from the museum and Langenegg Ey is a mile downstream from Langnau. Since the Unter had been owned by someone other than Langenegger for many years we decided to take a closer look at the Ey property in the valley to see if we could at least get a picture of the house and maybe, if we were really lucky, meet a distant relative.

Margaret and I walked along the river, where many of the locals took a break from normal life to cool off. We were pleasantly surprised by the number of covered bridges in and around Langnau, all still in use. We even ran over one on the outskirts of Langnau.

Just as we were approaching the long driveway to the Langenegger house, two women came up from the river and one of them spoke English. He told us that we were in the right place and that the Langenegger family lived here. She offered to escort us to the correct house among a group of various houses and buildings located on the property. With a cheerful German “Woo hoo” he called the people inside and introduced us to my ninth cousin who lives in the house where Ulrich Langenegger Senior was born in 1664 (the same one mentioned in the book that he immigrated to Pennsylvania).

Our newly discovered cousins ​​were friendly and warmly greeted us even though we just arrived at their doorstep after over 250 years without a Christmas card! We had a short conversation about the family and saw some of the information they had there. Coincidentally, the sister-in-law of the couple next door was in Pennsylvania to attend a Longenecker meeting while we were in Langnau. We exchange contact information so that we can follow up with information that we find that you might find helpful. They kindly offered us a cold drink from their well before taking a walk around the farm to take some photos. The cows were in the barn because it was unbearably hot that day. The milk from their cows is sold to a local farmer cooperative who turns it into cheese. If you are looking for authentic Langenegger cheese, look for the Emmentaler type as that’s what they do there. It’s sold in the US Just as Swiss cheese, the kind that has holes in it. I must admit it tasted much better in Langnau than in California.

The house is located an easy walk along the river from Langnau and consists of the original house plus some additional houses and outbuildings. I found it challenging to photograph the house on its own. It is a typical Swiss country house arranged with houses and a barn under one roof. On one side is a dirt ramp that goes directly to the attic above the barn that is used to move the hay to that area for storage and use during the winter.

The roof is steep by US standards but not as steep as I would have expected in an area that receives a lot of snow. Most of the roofs in the area are tile and include a series of supports about six inches high that hold up the snow in the winter so it doesn’t fall all at once. Some buildings had a simpler system with only one set of supports near the bottom of the roof that supported a four-inch tube that ran the length of the entire house, apparently for the same purpose as the supports in other buildings. Also, this system probably uses snow to insulate the roof from the cold. Another cool thing about some roofs and houses: builders sometimes put their initials and the date of construction on the roof using different colored tiles. Others painted this information under the eaves or on the facade of the building under the eaves.

The Langenegger house isn’t quite as fancy as some in the city, but it is large and includes some fancy woodwork that we saw repeated within the museum, on covered bridges, and elsewhere in the area. The main structure appears to be large beams carefully attached at the right angles so that they become stronger as more weight is put on them, and they are held together with wooden dowels. On a bridge near the city we saw metal strapping that appears to have been added later.

The farm’s business is focused on dairy cows. There was a large cornfield planted near the house along with a well-kept garden that seems to adorn every house we saw in Switzerland. Along the driveway to the farm there are some cherry trees with mostly green fruits that are starting to turn pink in places. The rest of the farm seemed to be covered in grass. My friend John Garland in Oklahoma would call fences “psychological fences” – not much of a barrier to an animal that wants to get out. We noted that many fences appeared to be temporary and electrified so cows can be easily moved to fresh pasture as needed. We even saw an electric fence connected to a solar panel high in the mountains, a long train ride from Langnau. Out of respect for the time and space of the current occupants, we only stayed briefly.

We returned to our hotel along a path that runs alongside the river and stopped to rest in the shadow of an old covered bridge. We were exhausted again and happy to be able to meet our distant relatives and see the old house.

Research: If you are researching this area, there is no genealogical information available on Langnau. The records office has records from 1886, but does not publish them without the permission of the persons named in the records, and the charges for doing so are very high. You will have much better luck in Bern, where most of the Swiss records are held. There is almost always someone who speaks English and registry offices are no exception. The records are not computerized or indexed, but are sorted very neatly by location and time periods. You will need to tell them exactly who, where and when you want to search to get the right microfilm. So it’s an old-fashioned search that browses through long-written records using unfamiliar styles and letters. Lockers are located outside the office in the hallway and you will have to leave your backpack, purse, etc. there. It is free and safe.

The Bern State Archives are located at Falkenplatz 4, CH-3012 Bern, near the main train station. It was easy to find the third time I tried. The train station is large and busy and has several levels. Locate the elevators at one end of the station and take them to the top. If you are having trouble, follow the students and university signs to find the elevators. Once you’re at the top, head toward campus, the only way you can really go, and pass between two large, college-like buildings. Falkenplatz 4 is the first building on the right after passing through the campus area. There is a little stall on the other side of the little park where students gather to enjoy a good cheap sandwich; Get there early as the sandwiches will run out quickly after noon. The office is open from 8:00 to 12:00 and from 1:00 to 5:00 every day of the week, except Friday, which closes at 4:30. If you want to confirm before you go, their phone numbers are 031/633 51 01, fax 031/633 51 02. Copies cost one Swiss franc per page, so bring enough cash to get everything you want. You can easily spend 50 francs in an afternoon, depending on the records you want. I didn’t have time, but you may also want to check out these sources provided by the museum in Langnau. . .

Zivilstands-und Burgerrechtsdienst

Kantons Bern

Eigerstrasse 73

3011 Bern

031/633 47 85

Fax: 031/633 47 39

Nieisen Paul-Anthon

Biochstrasse 7

3753 Oberhofen am Thunersee

033/243 24 52