The DNA of the Cellier of France

In the trailer image to this article, you find the first 12 markers of Len Cillier’s Y chromosome. Len is from South Africa. The spelling of the family name of that family changed from Cellier to Cilliers about 150 years ago in South Africa. Their common ancestor was a Josué Cellier, who was born in Orléans, France around the year 1670.

If you compare the first 12 markers of Al´s and my Y chromosomes, you find that there is only one small difference between us. Al´s DYS 19/394 marker shows a value of 9, whereas mine is 8. These are both very rare values. A value of 9 is found by only a handful of individuals in the entire DNA database, whereas I seem to be the only one in the entire database of more than 2 million individuals with a value of 8 on that marker. The distance between Al and myself on a 12 marker Y chromosome test is thus 1, which indicates that he and I share a common ancestor strictly along the male line of inheritance within approximately the last 500 years, which we know to be true.

All male Swiss Cellier are expected to exhibit values between 8 and 10 on that marker and probably no more than maybe one additional small difference to Al´s and my DNA Y chromosome tests on a 12 marker test. The distance on a 67 marker Y chromosome test will likely be 5 or less.

In contrast, Len Cilliers of South Africa shows a value of 14 on the DYS 19/394 marker. Thus, he belongs to an entirely different haplo-group. The distance on a 12 marker test between him and Al is 14. It is even 15 between him and myself. Thus, we don´t share a common ancestor along the male line of inheritance for at least the last 2500 years, long before the advent of family names. Thus, the fact that he and we share the same family name is purely accidental.

DNA Testing

I just noticed that MyHeritage now offers DNA testing. They also claim that there already exists a "Cellier project," i.e., that they already have a Cellier in their database who had his DNA tested.

Please, be aware that their (inexpensive) Y-DNA12 test only tests on 12 markers. This is very little. Other companies, such as FamilyTreeDNA test on considerably more markers. Both Al and myself used that company to have our Y chromosome (which is inherited from father to son) tested on 67 markers. It would be great if one of the male Cellier of Nods would also take that test, but if you do, we encourage you to use FamilyTreeDNA rather than MyHeritage for that purpose.

Also, the MyHeritage website claims that they already have the DNA of a Cellier on file. This is true, but it is one of the Cellier from South Africa, which are descendants of French Cellier and not of Swiss Cellier. They are no more genetically related to us than any other European males going by any other names would be.

Life in La Neuveville During the French Period (1797-1814) – Part 2

As I had mentioned already, the economic conditions were excellent in La Neuveville during the French period … at least during its early years. When the fortunes of war started to change in 1811, and especially during the disastrous Russian campaign of 1812/1813, also La Neuveville suffered.

Yet, as I read recently in an excellent book written by Frédy Dubois “La Neuveville 1797 – 1815: La vie d’une petite ville frontière de la Grande Nation,”the reasons for the economic success of the early years were not only those that I had mentioned earlier. Let me explain.

As soon as the French took over, life in La Neuveville changed profoundly … and the people of La Neuveville hated it. During the 18^th century, La Neuveville had enjoyed a large degree of political autonomy. Thanks to their unique political construct of the “combourgeoisie” (La Neuveville belonged on the one hand to the bishopric of Basle, but on the other hand also to the Canton of Bern), they were able to play their two masters out against each other and, in this way, keep both of them at bay. Thus, they were able to do pretty much whatever pleased them.

With the arrival of the French, this all changed. France was organized in a highly centralized fashion and imposed on the people of La Neuveville French law in all of its facets. In particular, two different classes of people had been living in La Neuveville before the arrival of the French. There were the “bourgeois,” the citizen, who enjoyed full rights, made up all of the rules, and controlled the finances of the city; and there were the “habitants,” the other inhabitants, who were tolerated in the city, but had no rights whatsoever. These could be expelled from the city at any moment without even as much as a need for offering a reason for their expulsion.

The French immediately dissolved the bourgeoisie. Under Bonaparte, each French citizen was equal under the law, a principle that the old families of La Neuveville, who saw their privileges disappear, hated with a passion. Three powerful guilds had existed in La Neuveville, into which only citizen could be inducted: the guild of the “Vignerons,” the wine farmers, to which the Cellier belonged (the emblem of that guild is shown on the trailer image to this article), the “Pêcheurs,” the fishermen, and the “Escoffiers,” the guild of the shoemakers and butchers. The three guilds owned and ran the hotels in town, and each of them had amassed a small fortune. As the French ordered the guilds dissolved, the hotels were sold to the highest bidder, and the fortune of the guilds was then distributed among their members. Each guild member received several hundred Francs from the dissolution of the guilds.

Furthermore, also the bourgeoisie, which had controlled the tax money, had amassed quite a bit of money for rainy days. As the bourgeoisie was ordered by the French to be dissolved, the money of the bourgeoisie was (illegally, under the cover of the night) distributed among the citizen who lived in town at that time. Each citizen received several hundred Francs from that operation. No wonder that the citizen did well economically in those days.

Although the citizen did well at first, they hated every aspect of their new existence. In particular, they deplored the loss of their former independence and political autonomy. They didn´t want to be told by someone from the outside how to go about their business. In a display of power, the French planted an “arbre de liberté,” a tree of liberty, on the market square, which was promptly renamed “Place de la Liberté,” Freedom Square, a symbol that the people of La Neuveville were expected to applaud. It didn´t last long. The tree was quickly vandalized by some local renegades, who were never to be found thereafter, because the city officials knew, where not to look for them. Their ancestors had not saluted Gessler´s hat, and now, they were not about to pay tribute to a foreign tree of liberty on their soil.

The French in their magnanimity also gave to the people of La Neuveville a Statue of Liberty, made from copper (which they made them pay for), that was placed prominently at the entrance of the City Hall … and which afterwards needed to be protected by French soldiers around the clock to prevent it from suffering the same fate as the tree. It wasn´t to survive the departure of the French.

Yet, the one feature that the people of La Neuveville hated the most about the French occupation was the conscription. They didn´t appreciate at all having to send their sons to fight and die in a war that was not their own. They did everything in their power to avoid it. They bribed health officials to write fake medical opinions for them that declared them unfit for service; some of those who had not been citizen before the French invasion rejected the La Neuveville citizenship that the French had offered to bestow on them and declared stubbornly to be Helvetian citizen and therefore not obligated to serve; others simply were not to be found anywhere on the day they were supposed to leave.

During the final years of the French regime, the pressures got worse. The French needed ever more conscripts, and also, all of the people of France, including the inhabitants of La Neuveville, were expected to host and feed wounded French soldiers. Those families that had managed to avoid the conscription were expected to accept more of the wounded soldiers into their families.

When the French finally left, the old structures were quickly reinstituted. The bourgeoisie was revived but without its former money, which had been distributed to the citizen 15 years earlier. Also the former autonomy of the city was gone for good. The bishopric never recovered its former possessions, and Bern became the one and only master of La Neuveville.

Life turned quite miserable for the people of La Neuveville in the following years. The tax burden was high, and Bern was neither willing nor able to help its French-speaking citizen recover from their economic misery. Bern (and the other Cantons) were busy driving the country into State bankruptcy, a feat that was glamorously accomplished by 1848.

Daniel Cellier falling on hard times in La Neuveville (19^th Century)

Life in Switzerland was not always as prosperous as it currently is. Repeated famines occurred, e.g. in the winter of 1770/71 and again in 1816/17, because unfavorable weather conditions during the previous summer had made it impossible to grow enough food for the winter. Also the economic conditions were difficult during long stretches of time throughout Swiss history.

The French revolution had not primarily been triggered by political discontent, but rather by the poor economic conditions suffered by the French populace, as is true for most revolutions throughout history. A population that is well fed will not rebel.

Prior to the French revolution, the French nobility owned most of the good land, and was furthermore exempt from paying taxes. In contrast, the farmers and the bourgeoisie owned little and were taxed highly. Just like today, market liberalization forces had led to a decay in the prices of grain and other agricultural produce, which economically ruined the farmers. Napoléon promised to change the power balance between the nobility and the commoners for good, and he did keep his promise.

Here in Switzerland, the situation was a little better. The nobility had been expelled from Switzerland centuries earlier, and consequently, the ordinary people had been able to own private property much earlier, but then again, the inner cities, where most of the people lived and worked, had been populated already before the advent of Switzerland, and they belonged mostly to the church. The church was only too happy to play the same role here in Switzerland that nobility played elsewhere. Most of La Neuveville belonged in those days to either the bishop of Basle or the abbot of Bellelay.

Switzerland was doing poorly during the second half of the 18^th century. Many accounts are available from that period bearing witness to the economic hardship of those years. There are talks of school teachers who took their pupils out to the meadows to make them eat grass, so that their little stomachs wouldn´t be completely empty.

Thus, when the French army arrived to Switzerland, they did not have to conquer the country against the resistance of the Swiss. Large segments of the Swiss population welcomed Napoléon´s troops with open arms.

La Neuveville did well under Napoléon. The city grew rapidly in this period and turned into a busy little border-town that drew wealth from the customs services and from the customs officers that had moved into town and who all needed to buy furniture and other goods.

When the French left, La Neuveville quickly converted back into the sleepy provincial township that it had been before the arrival of the French. The city was too far away from the centers of commerce to successfully compete for the export markets (except for the watchmakers who did quite well), and the local market didn´t support as many people as there were now living in town. Too many people were vying for the few jobs available, and many of the inhabitants of La Neuveville became destitute.

The business of my great-great-great-grandfather, Daniel Cellier (1761 – 1835), wasn´t doing well at all. He was a “vigneron”, a wine grower. Yet, wine was a luxury item. In times of economic hardship, the people of La Neuveville drank water. They couldn´t afford to buy his wine. He also was a “voiturier”, a producer of carriages – not the elegant coaches of the Gotthard express, mind you, but rather simple horse carriages for the farmers in the region. Unfortunately, he wasn´t the only one. He faced stiff competition.

As a consequence, his business didn´t generate sufficient income to put enough food on the table for his children. He needed to borrow money in order to feed his family. By the year 1819, he could no longer service his debt. Thus, Daniel and his wife Susanne Bachmann (1758 – 1835) decided in 1819 to take out a mortgage on two vineyards of theirs. You find the original document describing this deal here, with my transcription here, and my English translation here. Accepting new debt to service old debt is usually a losing proposition, but what should they have done?

When Daniel died in 1839, my great-great-grandfather, Daniel Cellier (1799 – 1857), inherited his father´s vineyards, but of course, he also inherited the mortgages. He first needed to sell enough wine to meet his mortgage payments before he could make any profit. Daniel, Jr., who had learned the trade of carpentry from his father, decided that there wasn´t enough of a market for horse carriages. He chose to produce furniture instead. He became a “menuisier”. Yet there were also several carpenters in town, and there wasn´t enough business for all of those either.

To boost his income, Daniel, Jr. sometimes cut firewood for the city, as did his brother Fréderic Cellier (1802 – 1879). You find an original document describing this activity here, with my transcription here, and my English translation here. The currency units used in this document may be a bit confusing to you. Daniel received 17.5 Batze for one cord of firewood. Thus, he was paid 122.5 Batze for seven cords of firewood, corresponding to 12.25 L^des = Livres de Suisse = Swiss Pounds or Swiss Francs. The unit had been called Swiss Pound in the 18^th century. Napoléon changed the name to Swiss Franc, but the old name was kept in use in parallel with the new term for a while. Evidently, 1 Swiss Franc = 10 Batze. A Batze was a 10 Cent coin. You could still hear this term when I was a child. It has meanwhile disappeared from the language (at least in the sense of a 10 Cent coin). Daniel received 12 Francs, 2 Batze, and 2 Stutz for his seven cords of firewood. A Stutz was thus a coin with a value of 2.5 Rappe, i.e., a quarter of a Batze. We still use the term Stutz here in Switzerland today, but it has meanwhile changed its meaning. Today it is a (slang) expression for Franc. No one remembers any longer that a Stutz used to be a coin with a value of 2.5 Rappe.

It was all in vain. Daniel couldn´t make a living. In order to feed his family, he was forced to mortgage off one piece of property after another, and with each new mortgage that he accepted, it became more difficult to service his debt. The end came swiftly. Come February of 1852, it was all over. He had mortgaged to the roof every single one of his possessions, and he had run out of options. He had to declare bankruptcy. His possessions were all seized and auctioned off, one by one, as evidenced by this document, with my transcription here, and my English translation here. The Cellier family home (shown on the trailer image to this article) went to Jean Zeller for 1740 Swiss Francs. No bidders were found for his two vineyards, at least not during the first round of biddings. My great-grandfather, Daniel Auguste Cellier (1841 – 1914), was 11 years old at the time.

Daniel and his family moved to Champfahy, a big farm behind La Neuveville, where he worked as a farmhand. In his free time, he taught my great-grandfather the trade of carpentry. It was the only gift he could still confer to him. Daniel never got over the loss of his livelihood, and he didn´t survive it for very long. Five years later, in 1857, he died in the local hospital.

Daniel´s wife, Elisabeth Gehri (1814 – 1865), who liked to be called Anna, moved to the “maison de bienfaisance”, the poorhouse, after her husband´s death. In 1860, she bore another child, Sophie Louise Cellier (1860 – 1869), conceived out of wedlock. She was 46 years of age at the time. The circumstances of how she became pregnant once more are not known. As she couldn´t care for her child, Sophie was taken away from her and placed at Montagu, the children asylum of the city, where she died after only a few years. Anna soon fell ill also. She died in 1865, also in the local hospital, just like her husband before her.

My great-grandfather didn´t see a future for himself in La Neuveville. The place simply wasn´t big enough. He needed to move to a larger city where he would find more customers for his trade. As soon as he could, he left La Neuveville to never return. He moved to La Chaux-de-Fonds, where he was able to make a new start. He bought a house with a carpenter´s workshop for himself and his family, a house that I still remember very well from my childhood days. My grandfather, Édouard Cellier (1877 – 1947), learned the trade of carpentry from him and took over the workshop after his father’s death, and my uncle, Charles Émile Cellier (1915 – 1982), inherited it from my grandfather.

My great-grandfather never made a fortune, but he was at least able to feed his family. My father, Jean Cellier (1912 – 1998), was the first among my direct ancestors on the Cellier side to get himself a university education. He studied law at the University of Zurich, where he and my mother decided to stay and open a law-firm. I myself was born in Zurich.

When my father moved to Zurich in 1933, my grandfather couldn´t afford to buy him a regular suitcase. Thus he built two big boxes out of wood in his workshop that my father then used to move his possessions to Zurich. The two wooden boxes are still in my attic today, witnesses to a past long gone.

The Darby movement and the Cellier of Nods (19^th Century)

This article spans an entire 400 years and reaches all the way into modern times, where history turns into current events, but let me start from the beginning.

The story begins with the reformation of the early 16^th century. In the year 1528, the Bernese government decided that the entire population of the region under its rule would convert to the new faith and henceforth call themselves protestants. This applied to both the inhabitants of Nods and those of la Neuveville, and so, the Swiss Cellier became all protestants in 1528, whether they liked it or not. No one asked their opinion on the subject.

Thus, I myself grew up as a protestant, and as such was taught in school that the reformation had led to a modernization of the church. The reformation had been a step forward on the ladder of evolution.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Religious reformations, schisms of the church, and many of those took place over the course of the centuries, were always, without any exception, reactionary in nature. When the protestant reformation began in 1517, time had been ripe for a revolution. Reformers popped up everywhere in Europe simultaneously. In Wittenberg it was Luther, in Zurich the flag of the revolution was carried by Zwingli, and in Geneva, Calvin proclaimed the changes of time. The goals, in all of these movements, were quite similar, and for this reason, history now talks about one single reformation that groups all of these distinct movements together.

The reformers revolted against a clergy that had become decadent and corrupt. Think only of the Borgia popes. There couldn’t have been a family less devout and more power-hungry than the Borgias. Yet with their riches, they were able to buy the papacy for themselves twice (1455 – 1458 and 1492 – 1503). They turned the Catholic church into a first-rate business. They exploited the gullibility of their parishioners and filled their coffers by selling worthless sheets of paper, so-called indulgences, to them promising them forgiveness of their sins.

As the Catholic dogma preached the infallibility of the pope, there was no possibility of reforming the church from within. A schism had become inevitable. Those who could no longer close their eyes in front of what they saw happening in Rome had to denounce the authority of the pope and go their own way by following their conscience.

The reformation was a movement back to the roots, back to the simpler times of the forefathers. The decadence that had come with the Italian renaissance had to end. Everything that might seduce the people to being decadent was strictly prohibited. There was no dancing allowed in Zurich and no listening to music. People who failed to attend Zwingli’s Sunday sermons without very good reason were severely punished.

Zwingli’s moral guardians reported on anyone and everyone who misbehaved. They became the Taliban of Europe. The gold in the churches reminded them of the decadence of the Catholic church, and so, all of the beautiful and precious religious art hoarded over centuries by the Catholic church and displayed in the houses of God here in Zurich and elsewhere in other parts of the world that had come under the rule of the reformers had to be destroyed.

In the early 19^th century, time was ripe once again for another revolution. This time around, it was a revolution that took place in the United Kingdom. Its originators revolted against an Anglican church that had become as power-hungry as the Catholic church had been 300 years before. The Anglican church influenced and, in major ways, controlled British politics. The church was allowed to do so by, in turn, declaring their unconditional allegiance with the British crown.

A number of Anglican priests primarily from Ireland questioned the legitimacy of that allegiance. They believed that you could be a good and devout Christian without swearing allegiance to a worldly king. Their job as priests was to prepare their parishioners for the afterlife, and not to meddle in worldly politics.

When the Anglican church forced them to demand of their parishioners an oath of allegiance to the British crown, they could not do so in good conscience. It came once again to a schism. As it had happened 300 years before, several such revolts took place in parallel. Several groups of primarily Irish priests revolted and became known as the Plymouth Brethren.

One among them was John Nelson Darby (his picture is on the trailer to this article), an Anglican priest of Irish descent with a brilliant mind. He had an enthusiastic and scintillating personality, and was furthermore capable of speaking French fluently and almost without any accent. For this reason, he found many a follower in France and in the French-speaking Western part of Switzerland. Among those whom he convinced and converted to his way of thinking were the Cellier of Nods … and this marked the beginning of the end of the physical presence of the Cellier family in Nods, a presence that had lasted longer than 500 years.

The first generation of Darbyites didn’t face any problems yet. They knew perfectly well what they wanted, and they got it. Their children didn’t face too many problems either. Yet, they mostly stopped marrying within the village. They felt much stronger ties to their brethren in faith than to their neighbors from across the road. The young male Cellier much rather married daughters of other Darbyites than getting involved with girls from the village, and the young female Cellier gave their hand in marriage to other Darbyites from out of town and moved away.

Because they kept mostly to themselves, the children of the Cellier who remained in Nods had difficulties making friends in school, because the parents of their comrades disapproved of the lifestyle that the Cellier had chosen for themselves. As a consequence, these children did not want to stay in Nods after they had grown up, because they did not wish to expose their own children to the same kinds of problems that they themselves had faced.

Samuel Cellier (1882 – 1962), a deeply religious individual himself (I already translated his booklet for you), moved to Zurich, where he could lead a life of his choosing in anonymity; where not every one of his moves would be observed and commented on by his neighbors. His brother Louis Aimé Cellier (1888 – 1968) moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he found a congregation of like-minded individuals that enabled him to bring up his children in an environment that was supportive of their chosen lifestyles. Others remained in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, but not in Nods.

The last Cellier who still lived and died in Nods were Philippe Émile Cellier (1881 – 1958) and his wife Berthe Élisa Forchelet (1880 – 1965). After their deaths, a son of theirs, Jean Albert Cellier (1914 – 1986) worked the farm for a few more years. Then it was leased out for a while, and finally, the farm that had supported the Cellier family for so long was sold a few years back. Only the gravestones of Philippe, Berthe, and their daughter Gertrude Léa Cellier (1907 – 1961) that can be visited in the Nods graveyard still bear witness to a long and rich family history that had been intimately linked to the hamlet of Nods for more than 500 years, a family history that had finally come to an end.

Life in La Neuveville during the French period (1797-1814)

In the last few weeks, I have been working on the civic records of La Neuveville during the French period. Let me report about my findings.

La Neuveville was conquered in late 1797 by the armies of Napoléon, as was all of Switzerland in that time period. However, La Neuveville (and the plateau de Diesse, including Nods) were a special case. Whereas France turned Switzerland into a protectorate of France, called république helvétique, this was not the destiny of La Neuveville. The city and the region North of it were annexed by France. Thus from late 1797 until early 1814, La Neuveville formed part of the république française with all of the consequences that this had.

In La Neuveville (and Nods), the Swiss legal system was fully replaced by the French legal system during that period, and La Neuveville inherited the horrific French bureaucracy that is still exemplary even today. As a consequence, the French period is much better documented than any period before or after.

The Catholic church, emboldened by the revocation of the edict of Nantes under Louis XIV, had bet on the wrong horse during the French revolution by supporting the king. Napoléon wasn't amused and subsequently punished the church wherever and whenever he could. He formulated the principle of strict separation of state and church, which is still observed by most modern democracies today, and he took the registries (in the Canton of Bern: a baptism registry, a confirmation registry, a marriage announcement registry, a marriage registry, and a burial registry) away from the church and replaced those functions by an état civil that henceforth maintained a birth registry, a marriage registry, and a death registry. The church was allowed to continue keeping its own records also, as it does so to this day, but the church registries had lost their legal significance.

When the French army left in early 1814, the Swiss legal system was re-imposed quickly over La Neuveville, but Switzerland adopted many of the French innovations, such as the état civil. Thus, the church had lost its official (legally recognized) registries for good. However, the civic registries after 1814 are not open to the public at large. Although Swiss data protection laws state explicitly that data older than 1875 are in the public domain, the Swiss civil registry offices watch over their registries with hawk eyes. One needs a special permit to consult any of those registries, and none of the information in those registries is allowed to be photographed.

Thus it is only during the French period that we have access to two sets of registries in parallel: the church records and the civic records. The civic records offer much more information than the church records, information that is only available for that short time period. In the civic registries, each event (birth, marriage, or death) is recorded in detail occupying at least half a page. The trailer image to this article shows one such entry in the birth registry. It documents the birth of my great-great-grandfather, Daniel Cellier (1799 – 1857). The document is signed, among others, by his father, Daniel Cellier (1761 – 1835), and also by an uncle of his, Daniel Péter (1752 – 1830), husband to his father’s sister, Jeanne Marguerite Cellier (1765 – 1831).

The civic records list consistently the professions of the men, whereas the church records only provided such information when this helped to reduce confusion, i.e., when it helped to distinguish between two individuals going by the same name while living in the same time period. The French also introduced to Switzerland a building addressing scheme for the first time in its history. Remember how cumbersome this had been 200 years earlier during the times of Thiébault Cellier? The French didn´t introduce street addresses to La Neuveville yet, as the city was sufficiently small; instead, they simply numbered the houses of La Neuveville through, the numbers ranging from 1 .. 228, and the civic records list, in which house the people who were recorded in the registries lived. My great-great-grandfather was born in building #185, where he spent his early years. Yet, this was not the primary Cellier residence, which was building #153, the house in which my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Jean Daniel Cellier (1735- 1809) lived until his death.

When my great-great-great-grandfather married in 1798, he moved out of his parents’ home to a rental apartment located in building #159. Yet, the apartment was small and already one year later, when his wife, Susanne Bachmann (1758 – 1835) was expecting their first-born, they moved to a larger apartment located in building #185. After the old man had died, the young family, meanwhile blessed with two children, my great-great-grandfather and his brother Fréderic Cellier (1802 – 1879), moved back into their parents’ home together with a half-sister of his, Lidie Cellier (1779 – 1835), a daughter from my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s second marriage, and her husband, Jean-Pierre Châtelain (1771 – 1855). I provide these details only in order to demonstrate, how much wonderfully detailed information can be extracted from these civic records.

17 years is a short period of time, and yet, it was to be expected that, during the 17 years of French rule, someone would get born, or married, or die in almost every house of the community. Thus, it made sense to create a database that lists the 228 houses of the city and records, for each house, who lived in these buildings during that time period. This is what I attempted to accomplish in the past few weeks. The results of my efforts can be found in an Excel file that you can download here. My expectation turned out to hold. I have been able to repopulate almost every house of the city with some of its former inhabitants.

Since most of the houses in the inner city of La Neuveville are older than 200 years, it would be great if we could map the French numbering scheme to the current postal addresses. I thus tried to locate a map of La Neuveville from the French period that shows the location of the houses together with their numbers. Unfortunately, I haven´t been successful so far in locating such a map. According to information received from Nicolas Barras, archiver at the state archive in Bern responsible for the Jura region, such a map once existed. It is mentioned in 1825 (state archive document BB X 4896, p.25), which talks about an atlas parcellaire for La Neuveville. Unfortunately, that document subsequently disappeared. We don´t know whether it was destroyed as being no longer of use, or whether it still lingers somewhere on an attic or in a basement waiting to be rediscovered.

Yet even without such a map, the database is very useful and highly interesting. If we cannot relocate the map, we may be able to reconstruct it by asking members of the old bourgeois families living in La Neuveville today, in which houses their ancestors lived. For example, I already know where my own ancestors lived, a fact that is recorded in a book by Jacob Germiquet entitled "Neuveville et ses habitants," published in 1888 (I have an electronic copy available if anyone of you should want it), which was also confirmed by cousin Théo Moeckli, a direct descendant of the Fréderic Cellier mentioned above, who currently lives in La Neuveville and who pointed the property out to me. It would probably suffice to ask some of today´s Ballif, Evard, Imer, Marolf, etc. who are interested in the history of the city and who could point out to me where their own ancestors lived to get a fairly decent mapping of the French street numbers to the modern postal addresses. All it would take is to identify between 10 and 20 percent of the buildings, and the rest would follow naturally.

The results that I found were unexpected in some ways, which makes them all the more interesting. Let me explain.

We know that mobility in Switzerland had always been much lower than in neighboring countries. This has to do primarily with our peculiar citizenship rules: Swiss people aren´t primarily citizen of Switzerland ... they are citizen of a particular community. I am still a citizen of La Neuveville, although I have never lived there. In fact, it was my great-grandfather, Daniel Auguste Cellier (1841 – 1914), who moved away from La Neuveville to La Chaux-de-Fonds for a new beginning after his father, Daniel Cellier (1799 – 1857), had to declare bankruptcy in 1855 and shortly thereafter died out of grief, but this is another story for another day. The communal citizenship was important until the 1970s, because if someone became a pauper, it was his community of citizenship and not his community of residence that needed to take care of him and his family. For this reason, the communities guarded their right to admit people to their citizenship roles jealously.

In fact, the Swiss communities did everything in their power to discourage mobility. Men of La Neuveville had to pay a foreign-women-marriage tax when they chose to marry a woman from out of town. The tax was 40 Ecus for a woman from another Bernese community; for a woman from another Swiss Canton, men had to pay 80 Ecus; and the going rate for women from abroad was 120 Ecus -- quite stiff compared to the cost of living in those days. According to information from cousin Nicolas Junod, this was done because often these marriages didn´t last, and divorced women from out of town would usually not return home but instead move into the local poorhouse, the maison de bienfaisance. Thus, the foreign-women-marriage tax was used to pay for the maintenance of the poorhouse. According to information obtained from Martin Pestalozzi, archiver of Aarau and a cousin of my wife´s, citizen who chose to move away from La Neuveville had to pay a one-time exit tax, because they took their possessions with them. Furthermore, citizen living elsewhere had to pay an annual tax to La Neuveville for keeping up their citizenship. Thus, the La Neuveville authorities did everything in their power to dissuade people from moving either in or out.

When the French arrived, this all changed. The people of La Neuveville were simply French citizen and were free to move anywhere they wanted within the territory of France. Consequently, the mobility went up quite a bit during the 17 years of French rule. In particular, about two dozen or more customs officers moved to La Neuveville in 1797/98, because there was now an international border just East of the city that needed to be staffed. Those customs officers mostly moved away again in 1814 since they were out of a job as the international border moved away ... and took their local wives along with them as they left. Yet, this is only one example of increased mobility during that time period.

When the French left, Swiss citizenship rules were reinstated quickly. Yet there were now lots of new people living in town, who hadn´t been there 17 years earlier and who consequently weren´t local citizen. To clean up the mess that the French had left behind, La Neuveville introduced some form of amnesty in the coming years. Between 1817 and 1822 there was a flurry of new acceptances into the bourgeoisie roles of the city to naturalize those who had moved to La Neuveville during the years of French rule and decided to stay after the French had left.

Because of the low external mobility, I expected to also find a low internal mobility, i.e., I fully expected that the people of La Neuveville would keep living in the same houses throughout their life span. This assumption turned out to be incorrect. There are many occasions, where an individual moved four or five times within the city during the 17 years of French rule alone.

Switzerland today is a nation of renters, rather than home owners. The percentage of people living in rented apartments is much higher here in Switzerland than in other European countries. This has to do with our peculiar mortgage regulations. Whereas in other countries, mortgages are time-limited, i.e., mortgage holders pay off their principle over a 20 to 30 year time period, mortgages here in Switzerland are perpetual, i.e., the Swiss people only pay interest, but never pay off the principle. This benefits the powerful Swiss banks who own all of the titles. Switzerland, in fact, doesn´t belong to the Swiss people -- it belongs to the Swiss banks.

In other countries, parents often suggest to their children, after they have become independent, to buy an apartment. The parents then offer the 20% required down-payment as a gift to their children. This constitutes a form of retirement savings. When the children retire 30 years later and their income reduces because of it, they won´t have to worry about mortgage payments any longer. By that time, they own their apartments clear and free. Not so here in Switzerland. Since our mortgages are perpetual, people have much less of an incentive for buying apartments.

I assumed this to be a fairly recent phenomenon, but not so. Many of the people of La Neuveville during the French period were renters also. This certainly applies to many of the newcomers, such as the customs officers, but it also applies to members of older families. When a young man married, he moved out of his parents´ home and rented an apartment where he then lived with his wife. As ever more children were born, the family needed more space, and consequently, people moved from one apartment to another ... until their parents died, which is when they finally moved back into their family home.

In the database, you find several people listed as propriétaire. Those were older individuals who had stopped working and lived on rental income. Most houses in the inner city are three-story buildings. Families often separated one floor out from the rest of the house and offered it for rent to boost their income in this way. Thinking about it, it all makes perfect sense, but it was not what I had expected to find.

Bill of enfeoffment of Thiébault Cellier (ca. 1573-1639)

One of my most exciting finds in the city archives of La Neuveville is a book of 197 pages called “Reconnaissances,” dating from approximately the year 1630, a book with two iron locks, a photograph of which is shown as “trailer” of this article. I have photographed that entire book cover to cover. “Reconnaissances” refers to a set of legally notarized documents.

I meanwhile started to transcribe and translate this book. This article refers to one of the documents in that book, a bill of enfeoffment of Thiébault Cellier, who is Al´s direct ancestor. You find photographs of this two page document here and here.

I first transcribed the document into more easily readable French. Since this is an old document, it makes use of some old-French expressions that are no longer easily understandable, such as “devers jorant,” meaning “en direction est” (to the East) or “devers bise,” meaning “vers le nord” (to the North), or “jouxte” = “à côté de” (next to) from Latin: “iuxta.” The transcription can be accessed here. I finally translated the document into modern English. The English translation can be viewed here.

The bill lists all of Thiébault´s possessions: a house (taxed annually at 5 sous), a firewall separating his house from that of the neighbor to the East (taxed annually at 3 sous), and a communal oven located across the road to the West (taxed annually at 20 sous).

The document describes the location of the property. The concept of street addresses had not yet been introduced to La Neuveville. We owe this concept only to the French revolution. During the French period (1797-1814), all houses of La Neuveville were numbered through from 1 to 228. Only after the French period had ended, street names were introduced to La Neuveville. I´ll report about the French period in another article to be written at a later time.

How cumbersome this had been! Rather than listing the street address of his property as “16, rue du Bourg” or whatever, Thiébault had to specify the location of his property by listing all of his neighbors to the East, the West, the South, and the North.

Why is it that the oven is four times more valuable than the house? Why is the firewall listed as a separate possession? The reason is that the firewall and the oven were brick structures, whereas the house, in which Thiébault lived, was probably built from wood.

In the old church records of La Neuveville, you find two different expressions for baker: boulanger and fournier. Whereas there could be several boulangers living in the city simultaneously, there was in each generation only one fournier. What is the difference between the two? A “boulanger” is a baker in the modern sense of the word, i.e., a person who bakes stuff that he then sells in a bakery store, a “boulangerie.” The “fournier,” on the other hand, is the owner of the “four banal,” the community oven, a place to which the people of La Neuveville could bring their home-made dough to bake their own bread for a fee.

Medieval cities in Europe were very compact and mostly built from wood. One small fire started anywhere could easily destroy the entire city, as this has happened many times over to most cities of Europe. For this reason, most houses did not come with their own ovens. They only featured a small fireplace for cooking. When women needed to bake bread, they took their home-made dough to the community oven, the “four banal.” Thiébault Cellier was the “fournier” of La Neuveville of that generation. He was also a city councilor.

His son, Jehan Cellier le vieux (ca.1600-ca.1660), inherited the four banal from his father. He was thus the fournier of the next generation, and he was also a city councilor.

His grandson, Jaques Cellier le jeune (ca.1630-1693), is listed in the church records as fournier and also as grand sautier (secretary to the court).

Thiébault´s great-grandson, Jean-Jaques Cellier (1669-1724) was an inn-keeper and a hatter. He thus didn´t inherit the four banal from his father. Jean-Jaques´ son, Jean-Jaques Cellier (1707-1765), pastor of Orvin and later of the French church of Basel, was a dazzling and well-documented personality, whose life shall be described in another future article on this website that deserves to be written.

What happened to the four banal that had been in the Cellier family for several generations? We can read in the book “Chronique de la Famille Imer de La Neuveville” by André Imer that Israël Imer became the fournier of La Neuveville of the next generation. He was the founder of the fourniers branch of the Imer family.Israël Imer (1675-1756) was married to Judith Cellier, a daughter of Jaques Cellier le jeune.

86^th Birthday of Marcel Cellier

Yesterday, Marcel Cellier was able to celebrate his 86^th birthday in the presence of his wife, his three children and their spouses, and five of his eight grandchildren. He was in high spirits and enjoyed himself tremendously. Music is ever present in Marcel’s home and life. Everyone in his family makes music. The house reverberates with it.

Marcel’s world has gotten smaller in recent years. .He no longer enjoys much going out to meet people. Yet in his music, the world remains as large and open as it always was.

Happy birthday, Marcel! Thank you for being around. You and your music make the world a brighter place.

How and when did the Cellier family name evolve here in Switzerland?

Looking at the history of family names, we may read that in China, the nobility adopted family names first, whereas the commoners did not. The common people demanded family names in order to feel more important, in order to become more like the nobles. Here in Europe, the development of family names proceeded along very different lines. Here it were the commoners who got family names first, whereas the nobility adopted them last. Pope Benedict XVI still doesn’t carry a family name (he did, before he became Pope). He doesn’t need a family name since everyone knows who the Pope is. There is only one Pope on the planet. Queen Elizabeth II is of the house Windsor, but Windsor is not exactly her family name. It happened only in recent years that some of the British royals started using Windsor as a family name.

Family names started to be added to people’s names in order to distinguish between two individuals living in the same place at the same time who went by the same names. For this reason, family names developed earlier in urban areas, where the higher population density led to confusions sooner. In places like Zurich, first family names appeared shortly after the year 1000. By the end of the 13^th century when Switzerland was founded, most of the people in central Switzerland already carried family names.

This was not the case in places like Nods or La Neuveville. Even in the (well preserved) La Neuveville census documents of 1501, which I photographed last week, close to 50% of the inhabitants of La Neuveville at that time were not listed carrying family names yet. First family names popped up in the region after the year 1300, but it was only after the year 1600 that family names had been adopted by all people in the region and had become more or less stable.

Initially, family names were added as a qualifier to distinguish between two individuals going by the same names. These qualifiers were initially characteristics of an individual rather than of the entire tribe. Thus, they were not necessarily passed on from father to son, and even if they were, the sons often chose to change them.

We meanwhile know that the first individuals carrying the name Cellier here in Switzerland were two brothers, Jehan and Collet, who were born in Nods around the year 1500. They both adopted that name because they liked it. Their father was still a Junod who carried Sellier (with an initial “S”) as a qualifier, because there were two different Jehan Junod in Nods simultaneously, and the younger of them used Sellier as a qualifier since he happened to be a saddler by profession.

What follows now is a bit speculative, because I haven’t found records yet to prove all of the conclusions that I have reached.

To the best of my understanding, a Johannes (without family name) was born around the year 1360 in the Swiss-German speaking village of Täufelen, a community located South of the Lake of Biel/Bienne. Johannes decided as a young man to move to Nods. Upon arrival in Nods, his name changed from Johannes to Jehan, since people in Nods spoke French (or rather Provençale).

At the time of Jehan´s arrival in Nods, there was already another Jehan living there. Since everyone knew who Jehan was, the newcomer needed a qualifier. He was called Jehan of Täufelen, in French: Jehan de Chiffelle, since Chiffelle (or rather Chouffaille) is the French name for Täufelen. Jehan thus adopted a family name. He became the first Jehan Chiffelle.

Jehan presumably had two sons, born around the year 1390, whose first names I don´t know. Yet, each of these two sons had again a son by the name of Jehan, born around 1420. The older of them was Jehan Chiffelle. We know of him. He is well documented. His son, born around 1450, was Hory Chiffelle, Mayor of Diesse.

The younger Jehan Chiffelle needed a qualifier. Since he was the younger, he was called Jehan Chiffelle dit Jeannot, i.e., John Chiffelle also called little John. Just like in Grimm´s fairy tale about the grosse and the kleine Hans (big and small John), which is set in the same time period, i.e., before family names were established but after qualifiers started to be used to distinguish between two individuals going by the same names, Jeannot (French for little John) was added as a qualifier to distinguish him from his older cousin.

Jehan Chiffelle dit Jeannot had two sons, born around the year 1450, whose first names I don´t know yet, who used the qualifier of their father´s name as their family name. They called themselves Junod (a variant of Jeannot) because they liked Junod better. Each of the two Junod brothers had two sons, born around the year 1480. The older called his sons Jehan Junod and Antoine Junod, whereas the younger called his sons Jehan Junod and Regnault Junod. These four individuals are documented.

So now, we got two Jehan Junod in Nods. The older was Jehan Junod, whereas the younger required a qualifier. Since he had learned the trade of saddler, he was called Jehan Junod dit Sellier … and the rest of the story is known.

I made some progress today.

I had always assumed that it was Jehan Seillyer, found at the root of the Cellier of La Neuveville, who had moved from Nods to La Neuveville as a young man. Reading Clottu's 1949 text [1] about the Cellier family again in more detail, I suddenly recognized that this assumption is incorrect. Jehan Seillyer lived and died in Nods. It was only one of his sons, Jehan Cellier, who moved to La Neuveville as a young man, where he married in 1534 a local girl by the name of Janette Mayor and established the family of the Cellier of La Neuveville.

According to Olivier Clottu, Jehan Cellier (born around 1510) had a brother by the name of Nicolet Cellier. Until today I knew nothing about Nicolet. Due to my mistake, I had assumed that Nicolet was born and raised in La Neuveville. However, this belief was based on a wrong assumption. Nicolet Cellier lived and died in Nods.

Today it suddenly dawned on me: We know a lot about Nicolet Cellier ... he is mentioned in the church registries of Diesse (including Nods) as Collet Cellier. He is the common ancestor of all of the Cellier of Nods.

Consequently, Jehan and Collet Cellier were in fact two brothers, and the two sub-trees of the Cellier families of Nods and La Neuveville have now been united.

Their father, I had called him Jehan Seillyer in accordance with a reference found in the book by Gross and Schnider [2], was the guy who led the Nods contingent in the military expedition to Interlaken in 1529 when Bern requested soldiers to root out the remaining “papists” (Catholics), who still controlled the Bernese Oberland and had established their headquarters at Interlaken.

According to Clottu [1], he was also called Jehan Junod dit Sallier. He had a brother by the name of Regnauld Junod. Their father was a Junod of Nods, born around the year 1450. This establishes the hitherto missing link between the Cellier and the Junod.

Regnauld Junod may have been the father of Gérard Junod who moved to Lignières and established the Junod family of Lignières, a living descendant of which is Nicolas Junod.

We notice that, in the early years of the 16^th century, a good number of the inhabitants of Nods moved simultaneously away to neighboring villages: Jehan Cellier and his sister Peresson moved to La Neuveville; Gérard Junod moved to Lignières; three brothers of one of the Chiffelle families of Nods moved simultaneously to La Neuveville, to Lignières, and to Biel(Bienne).

What was the reason for the sudden exodus? I don´t know this yet for sure, but I suspect that there had been a few bad harvests in a row, and there was simply not enough food in Nods for all of its inhabitants. Thus, some of the younger people moved away to new places where they could start afresh.

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[1] Clottu, Olivier (1949), "Les familles de La Neuveville, leur origine et leur destinée," Actes de la Société Jurassienne d'Émulation, p.90-91.

[2] Gross, Adolphe et Charles-Louis Schnider (1979), Histoire de La Neuveville, Édition Slatkine, Genève, p.278-279.