For Americans researching their colonial ancestry, identifying an English, Dutch, French, or German immigrant is often relatively straightforward. Finding a Swiss ancestor, however, can be considerably more complicated.

Swiss immigrants frequently settled among larger German- or French-speaking populations, where their distinct national origins could disappear from later records and family traditions. A German-speaking Swiss farmer in colonial Pennsylvania, for example, could easily be remembered by later generations simply as “German.”

The Descendants of Swiss Settlers (DSS) was created in part to bring these overlooked Swiss ancestors back into the genealogical and historical record. Founded in 2022, the lineage society honors the legacy and accomplishments of Swiss men and women who settled in North America before March 5, 1798.

For genealogists with early Swiss-American ancestry, it offers something that had long been missing: a hereditary society specifically devoted to their heritage.

Why March 5, 1798?

The qualifying date in the society’s name has particular significance in Swiss history.

The Old Swiss Confederacy developed over centuries as an alliance of largely autonomous cantons. That political order came to an end in 1798 amid the upheavals of Revolutionary Europe and was replaced by the Helvetic Republic, marking the beginning of a new era in Swiss history.

Descendants of Swiss Settlers therefore uses March 5, 1798 as its dividing line. The date gives the organization a clearly defined historical period and focuses its attention on the Swiss men and women who became part of North American history during the colonial and early national eras.

How Descendants of Swiss Settlers Began

The inspiration for the organization came from genealogist Joseph Smith, who had joined both the Swedish Colonial Society and the Dutch Colonial Society.

Smith knew that he also descended from at least one Swiss ancestor who had arrived in Pennsylvania during the colonial era. Naturally, he began looking for a comparable Swiss colonial lineage society.

He couldn’t find one.

The absence of such an organization had also been acknowledged by the Swiss Center of North America and the Hereditary Society Community. That gap provided the inspiration for what eventually became Descendants of Swiss Settlers.

Smith’s own family history demonstrated why an organization devoted specifically to early Swiss genealogy was needed.

His Swiss ancestors came from the cantons of Aargau and Bern, settling in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley during the 1730s and 1740s. They were farmers, adherents of the Reformed faith, and German speakers.

Once in Pennsylvania, they blended almost seamlessly into the larger German-speaking Protestant farming communities surrounding them. Their Swiss identity gradually became much harder to distinguish.

For Smith, that raised an intriguing genealogical question: What happened to their distinct Swiss identity and culture? The search for an answer—and the conviction that these settlers deserved to be remembered—helped lead to the creation of DSS.

Why Swiss Ancestors Can Be Difficult to Identify

The problem encountered by the society’s founder is hardly unique.

Historian Dr. Leo Schelbert, author of Switzerland Abroad: Historical Contours of a Nation’s Worldwide Presence, explained one of the fundamental challenges of researching Swiss immigrants:

“Swiss immigrants are often difficult to recognize as Swiss, however, because as speakers of German they were taken as Germans and if French-speaking as Huguenots from France. Swiss surnames, furthermore, are often indistinguishable from German or French ones, and often they became Anglicized.”

For genealogists, this is an important warning.

A colonial record describing an ancestor as German does not necessarily establish that the person came from what is now Germany. Likewise, a French-speaking Protestant immigrant may have originated in Switzerland rather than France.

Identifying a Swiss ancestor may therefore require following the genealogical trail all the way back to Europe rather than relying upon ethnicity or nationality recorded in later American sources.

The Mission of Descendants of Swiss Settlers

The society’s mission extends beyond simply certifying descent. DSS seeks to preserve and promote the history, genealogy, customs, and culture of early Swiss settlers.

It pursues that mission by:

1. Promoting and studying the history and culture of early Swiss settlers in North America.
2. Preserving documents and recording family histories, lineages, and traditions of those settlers.
3. Publishing materials relevant to their history, heritage, and memory.
4. Hosting events where members can embrace their Swiss heritage through education and fellowship.
5. Providing charitable support to organizations and individuals that increase awareness of the role and importance of the Swiss in North America before 1798.

The result is a society that combines the traditional genealogical work of a hereditary organization with a broader effort to restore an often-overlooked ethnic identity to the story of early North America.

Who Qualifies for Membership?

Membership in Descendants of Swiss Settlers is open to men and women age 18 or older who can establish lineal descent from a Swiss man or woman who settled in North America before March 5, 1798.

Importantly, the qualifying ancestor does not necessarily have to have emigrated directly from Switzerland to North America.

An applicant may also claim descent from a Swiss man or woman whose descendant or descendants left Switzerland, lived elsewhere for an interim period, and subsequently came to North America before the qualifying date.

This provision recognizes the complexity of historic migration. Families did not always travel directly from their ancestral village to an American port. Generations could live elsewhere in Europe before a descendant ultimately crossed the Atlantic.

How to Join Descendants of Swiss Settlers

Prospective members begin by completing the membership application available under the Membership section of the society’s website.

The society also makes the application process easier for genealogists who have already proven the same lineage for another hereditary organization. DSS accepts Record Copies from numerous other lineage societies as genealogical evidence. A complete list of acceptable Record Copies is maintained on its website.

The society welcomes inquiries from prospective members who aren’t certain whether their ancestry qualifies or who need additional information about the application process.

The Cantons Represented by DSS Members

Switzerland today consists of 26 cantons, and the ancestry represented within DSS provides an interesting window into historic Swiss migration patterns.

Society members currently trace qualifying ancestry to nine:

• Aargau
• Appenzell-Innerrhoden
• Basel
• Bern
• Freiburg
• Geneva
• Thurgau
• Vaud
• Zürich

That distribution is consistent with patterns of Swiss emigration to the New World during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A significant portion of the emigrants originated in Basel, Bern, and Zürich.

Researchers should also remember that modern cantonal boundaries and identities cannot always be projected backward onto eighteenth-century records. Before the Act of Mediation of 1803, for example, Aargau and Vaud were associated with Bern, while Thurgau was associated with Zürich.

Understanding the political geography of Switzerland during an ancestor’s lifetime can therefore be important when conducting genealogical research.

An Online Resource for Swiss-American Genealogy

One of the society’s most ambitious projects is its website. Rather than functioning solely as an organizational homepage, the website is designed specifically for English-speaking North Americans researching early Swiss-American ancestors.

Drawing information from dozens of sources, the society intends the site to become a primary genealogical resource for Swiss-Americans.

This is particularly valuable because researching Swiss ancestry can require consulting records created in several languages and understanding historical geography, religious affiliations, migration patterns, and changing political jurisdictions.

The website gives researchers a starting point for navigating those challenges.

Essential Resources for Early Swiss-American Research

Several published works are especially valuable for anyone attempting to establish a qualifying Swiss lineage.

Among them are:

• Dr. Albert Bernhardt Faust, Lists of Swiss Emigrants in the Eighteenth Century to the American Colonies. Faust’s two-volume work remains an exceptional resource. Published approximately a century ago, it examines emigrants particularly from the cantons of Basel, Bern, and Zürich and contains information on thousands of families and individuals who traveled to North America during the eighteenth century. Its coverage largely reflects the German-speaking, Reformed population that constituted an important part of early Swiss emigration. For today’s researcher, another advantage is accessibility: the volumes can be consulted online through the HathiTrust Digital Library.
• Annette Kunselman Burgert, Eighteenth Century Emigrants from the Northern Alsace to America. Burgert’s scholarship can help researchers untangle migration patterns involving the German-speaking regions bordering Switzerland.
• Cornelia Schrader-Muggenthaler, The Swiss Emigration Book. Another useful resource for identifying Swiss emigrants and reconstructing their journeys.
• Ernst Steinemann, A List of Eighteenth-Century Emigrants from the Canton of Schaffhausen to the American Colonies, 1734–1752, A particularly useful resource for genealogists researching ancestors from Schaffhausen.

Taken together, these works demonstrate why researching Swiss-American families often requires looking beyond conventional American genealogical sources.

Connecting With the Wider Swiss-American Community

Descendants of Swiss Settlers also participates in a broader community devoted to preserving Swiss and Swiss-American history.

The society has developed relationships with sister organizations, most notably the Swiss Center of North America, the Swiss American Historical Society, and the Swiss Society of Genealogical Studies.

These connections reflect the society’s broader purpose. Establishing a pedigree may be the starting point, but understanding the people represented by that pedigree requires historical and cultural research as well.

Giving Early Swiss Settlers Their Place in History

The creation of Descendants of Swiss Settlers highlights one of the most interesting functions of lineage societies: they can draw attention to groups whose identities have become obscured over time.

Early Swiss immigrants were very much part of the North American story. Yet German-speaking settlers could disappear into histories of the “Pennsylvania Germans,” while French-speaking Swiss could be mistaken for French or Huguenot immigrants. Anglicized surnames could obscure their origins still further.

DSS encourages genealogists to look more closely.

Behind a supposedly German or French colonial ancestor may be a family from Bern, Zürich, Basel, Aargau, Vaud, or another Swiss canton whose story has been waiting generations to be rediscovered.

For descendants who successfully make that connection, membership in the Descendants of Swiss Settlers provides an opportunity not simply to document their ancestry, but to reclaim and preserve a part of their family’s identity.

Learn More

• Descendants of Swiss Settlers Website
• Descendants of Swiss Settlers Facebook page