46 – This ancestor went to market

 When I was first working on my Swiss ancestry, I asked a genealogist how my G2 grandparents might have met, as they had lived in towns almost 18 km apart; he suggested that they may have met at a market. It's likely something I'll never know, but that doesn't keep me from wondering; now that I've researched this Swiss line in more detail, I think there are many ways in which my ancestral pairs found each other.

A centuries-old home in Koppigen today

My great-grandmother Eliza Greub was born in Burgdorf, Switzerland, Canton Bern; her "citizenship" was in Lotzwil however, the town her father Rudolf was from. Eliza's mother, Elizabeth Affolter, was from Koppigen, and when we first visited Switzerland and drove between the towns, they seemed pretty far apart for two people to meet in those days.

Koppigen to Lotzwil, 17.6 kilometers by foot

My Swiss seemed a bit different from my other ancestors, who typically lived in the same town for generations, marrying others in those same towns. The Greubs and Affolters had lived in Lotzwil and Koppigen for centuries, as far back as the church books go, but this was just the paternal lines; the women often came from other towns where their paternal lines also went far back, and as I traced my Swiss ancestry back, the map expanded to take in more and more distant towns. Here is a list of ancestors, back to G6 grandparents, grouped by town of birth:

Burgdorf: G1 Eliza Greub (citizenship in Lotzwil)

Lotzwil: G2 Rudolf Greub  b 1824; G3 Johannes Greub b 1788; G4 Johannes Greub b 1766; G4 Maria Greub b 1759; G5 Johannes Greub b 1746; G6 Hans Jakob Greub b 1712; G6 Anna Catharina Hofer b 1714; G6 Ullrich Greub b 1679

Koppigen: G2 Elizabeth Affolter; G3 Jakob Affolter b 1793; G3 Elizabeth Baumberger b 1794; G4 Jakob Affolter b 1767; G4 Niclaus Baumberger b 1770; G5 Samuel Affolter b 1739; G5 Peter Baumberger b 1736; G6 Niklaus Affolter b 1694; G6 Niclaus Baumberger b 1702

Bern: G3 Suzanne Pfister b 1786; G4 Johannes Pfister b 1756; G4 Susanna Kolb b abt. 1754

Bätterkinden: G4 Maria Mühlimann b 1770; G4 Elisabeth Knuchel b 1767; G5 Bendicht Mühlimann b 1740; G5 Barbara Minder b 1745; G5 Bendicht Knuchel b 1736; G5 Elisabeth Schneider b 1735; G6 Abraham Mühlimann b 1703; G6 Susanna Buchser b 1704; G6 Jacob Minder b 1717; G6 Elisabeth Schneider b 1722; G6 David Knuchel b 1694; G6 Jacob Schneider b 1704

Kleinholz: G5 Anna Barbara Spreng b 1747

Schangnau: G5 Christen Pfister b. 1730; G6 Ullrich Pfister b. 1708; G6 Barbara Schlüchter b 1702

Eggiwil: G5 Christina Neuenschwander b 1729; G6 Nicklaus Neuenschwander  b 1676; G6 Barbara Bärtschli b 1677

Seengen, Aargau: G5 Barbara Fischer b 1727

Thunstetten: G5 Barbara Brugger b 1742; G6 Johannes Brugger b 1714; G6 Catharina Steiner b 1716

Mülchi: G6 Barbara Müller b 1705

Ferenbaum: G6 Anna Eichelberger b 1712

Kirchberg: G6 Anna Margreth Leeman b 1708

Putting this data on a map, the majority of ancestors are in the Bätterkinden-Koppigen-Lotzwil area, and start to leak outward from this as we go back by generation. The towns with G5 and G6 ancestors typically go back to G7 and G8 before records run out. All except for my G5 Barbara Fischer (from Aargau, see upper right on the map) were born in Canton Bern.

Ancestral towns (Note: G6 designates that one G6 grandparent was born there, etc.)

How they may have met

With ancestry going back to the 16th century, my ancestral lines from Lotzwil and Koppigen had plenty of time to intersect, even if they were 11 miles apart. Koppigen is somewhat on the way to the city of Bern if you start in Lotzwil, and sometimes there were reasons to travel to the cantonal capital. On my great-grandmother Eliza Greub's paternal side, we see Rudolf Greub's father Johannes, a weaver of some kind in Lotzwil, marrying Susanna Pfister who was a midwife from Bern. Now Bern was the capital of the canton, and also had a large cathedral where many people in the canton would visit, and often marry. Perhaps Johannes met Susanna on a trip to the city of Bern.

Bätterkinden was next to Koppigen, and so it is no surprise that two of my G4 grandfathers in Koppigen married women from that town. It is certainly possible that they met in a local market, or town festival.

Another possibility is via the trades; the Affolters were saddle makers (saddlers) and leather workers, and the Baumbergers were wagon makers (wagners), trades that would interact. My G4 Maria Mühlimann  was daughter of a wagon maker in Bätterkinden and married Jakob Affolter, a saddler in Koppigen. 

People would certainly meet at family celebrations and marriages. On the Baumberger-Affolter line I have to go back to the G7 level to see a first case of pedigree collapse, but on the Greub line this happens sooner: G4 Johannes Greub b 1766 and G4 Maria Greub b 1759 were 1st cousins, 1x removed. They most likely met at some family gathering. 

Rudolf Greub and Elizabeth Affolter

And so this brings us back to my G2 grandparents, the ones that the genealogist had suggested may have met at a market. Their marriage is recorded in the church books of 4 towns: Lotzwil (where Rudolf was born and lived), Koppigen (where Elizabeth was born), Langenthal (where Elizabeth was living), and Wynigen (where they married, just south of Koppigen). The Koppigen record gives all this data as well as confirmation dates, in flowing script:

Koppigen church book entry for the marriage of Rudolf and Elizabeth

Now Langenthal was just north of Lotzwil, and one of Elizabeth's relatives had a brewery there. A couple Colorado history sources note that Rudolph was a druggist, one that Elizabeth "was an opera singer", another that "Elizabeth had a talent for singing," and so I think that opens up a lot more possibilities than that they met at a market, though that is also possible, especially since Elizabeth was living in Langenthal and not Koppigen at the time. Four months after they married their first child was born and died at 19 days old. They would eventually have 7 children in total, 2 dying shortly after birth (the second on their trip to Colorado), with 5 surviving to have families. 

The church in Wynigen where Rudolf and Elizabeth married

Sources

Search.ch. 

"They Came to Stay: Longmont Colorado 1858-1920", St. Vrain Valley Historical Association, Longmont Printing Co., 1971

Colorado Families: A Territorial Heritage. 1981. Denver, Colorado: The Colorado Genealogical Society.