Swiss Baptism Records

LegacyUser

beblake3 said: I'm getting great information from old Swiss baptism records for reconstructing my family which emigrated from Switzerland in 1749. Fortunately for me, they came from Sissach, where your baptism records are fairly complete. There are other branches of the family from other nearby communities, and I know the records exist, but you do not have them in your database. Are the Swiss records you have just a sampling, or do you intend to add more in the future? There was a great migration from this region to America in the 1700s. Given the language and script-writing issues for most folks like myself, it would be really helpful to add more baptism records to your database.

LegacyUser

gasmodels said: Not sure whether you are talking about images or indexed records. There are a number of Swiss church records available but it depends on the Canton you are interested in searching. An example is found here --- https://www.familysearch.org/search/c.... This collection contains over a half a million records and there are typically from 4 to 8 entries for each image so probably somewhere between 3 to 4 million vital records. These are church records but only for 3 Canton's --- Basel-Stadt, Bern and Schaffhausen. My ancestors came from Bern in the late 1800's so the records are quite complete. I do agree however that reading these old records does take a bit of effort to train yourself what and where to find the records of interest. The Swiss records that I have used have been very stable for the past 10 years and the images are available online for viewing, downloading and linking to Family Tree individuals. I have not seen a lot of new records added or new indexing records appearing for my Bern ancestors.

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: deblake, Welcome to the FS Users' forum

If you are just looking in the indexed records, you may be missing MOST of them

If you haven't already done so, look in the FS Wiki:
https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/...

Then search the FS Catalog for the desired Canton to see what records ARE available.

For Sissach: https://www.familysearch.org/search/c...

Taufen, Heiraten, Tote 1548-1739 Taufen 1740-1782
Heiraten 1740-1857 Konfirm. 1740-1830 Tote 1740-1856
Taufen 1783-1856
Konfirm. 1832-1876 Taufen 1857-1875 Tote 1857-1881 Heiraten 1857-1885

Regrettably they are only available at FHC's or affiliate libraries. But the first two DO have indexes available online.

LegacyUser

beblake3 said: gasmodels,
Robert Wren,

Thank you for your rapid feedback. Following the links you both provided led me to a number of really useful information, including:

https://www.baselland.ch/politik-und-...

This site contains entire document scans of the original material for every location that I'm researching in Basel-Landschaft. Of course, the material is in the original script writing. But your tips led to some great training material on FamilySearch.org that is already proving helpful. I have successfully "decoded" one vital birth record from Frenkendorf, with the promise of hundreds more. It will take time, but it's just what I was looking for (short of an English, typed, transcript...)

Thank you very much!

Brian Blake

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: Glad you found them, Brian.

You're far better off with the actual source records than the indexes- the only "real" reason for an index is to get you to the source.

Those same Frenkendorf films (unindexed) are available (at the Family History Library in Salt lake City.)
https://www.familysearch.org/search/c...

Happy researching!