Jean-Jacques Cellier (1707-1765), pastor of Orvin (1732-1748), pastor of the French church of Basle (1748-1764)

In this article, I wish to report about the life of Jean-Jacques Cellier, who chose to become a pastor, and about the implications of that decision to an entire branch of the Cellier of La Neuveville.

Jean-Jacques Cellier (1707-1765), a direct ancestor of Al Cellier, was born on June 5, 1707 in La Neuveville as the son of another Jean-Jacques Cellier (1669-1724), who had been a hatter and innkeeper by profession, and who had also served as secretary to the court. Jean-Jacques’s mother was Anne-Marie Gibollet, daughter of Baruc Gibollet (1642-1711), surgeon general and pugnacious sot, who had already been mentioned by me in my previous article on Jacques Cellier (1658-1718), who had served as Mayor of La Neuveville.

Jean-Jacques’ father died when our protagonist was only 17 years of age. His mother soon remarried David Cunier (1677-1755), “master of the seal” of La Neuveville, i.e., the person responsible for maintaining the financial books of the city. The young Jean-Jacques, however, was more drawn to his uncle, Baruc Gibollet (1692-1773), who had chosen the life of a pastor, and who, after having served as pastor of Renan (1715-1718), and then of Tavannes (1718-1734), had the good fortune to be able to return to his native city of La Neuveville, where he then served as pastor for many more years until his death in 1773.

Jean-Jacques was a quick and agile learner and already at the age of 20, he was named Deacon of Ergüel in La Neuveville, i.e., he became a preacher without having been ordained as a pastor yet. He served under the pastors Jean-Jacques Ballif (1685-1740) and Samuel Nicolas Petitmaître (1692-1762).

Life as a pastor wasn’t easy. There were many more aspiring preachers than available jobs, and competition for the few job offerings was fierce. Furthermore being a pastor, even if you succeeded to be appointed to a post, meant in all likelihood that you had to leave your native town and live elsewhere. It often meant to move several times during your life from one place to another.

This imposed a strain on the family, and it also had financial consequences. Pastors often chose to keep their official domicile in their native city, i.e., they continued to pay taxes to their native city, but then, they never got fully incorporated into the place where they served as pastors, and chances were high that they would be forced to move from one place to another. Alternatively, they could move their official domicile and pay taxes where they lived, but then, they had to pay additional taxes to their native city for preserving their citizenship. Either choice was unpleasant.

Jean-Jacques waited for the right opportunity to rise to the position of pastor, and by 1732, that opportunity seemed to have come. In early 1732, there was a rumor that soon the post of pastor of Orvin would become vacant. The former pastor, François Faigaux, had gotten into troubles, because he had chosen to marry his first-degree cousin, a young lady who had grown up in the Netherlands. Such marriages were forbidden by law. He asked the authorities to grant him an exception to the marriage ban between first degree cousins, but as the authorities took too long to decide on his request, he went ahead and got married in the Netherlands without having received an official Swiss marriage permit. The bishop of Basle did grant him the requested exception after the fact, but Faigaux´s scheming had left him vulnerable. By 1732, Faigaux renounced his pastorship and moved to the Netherlands, where he became pastor of Breda. He later was appointed Professor of Protestant Theology at the University of Marburg in Germany, and finally he became a professor and pastor of Kassel.

Jean-Jacques Cellier was well qualified for the job, but of course, he wasn’t the only one waiting for such an opportunity. In particular, there was one serious competitor, Jean-Henri Prêtre, who at that time served as Curate of Courtelary, thus was in a similar position as Jean-Jacques Cellier.

We can read in [1] that Prêtre agreed to the following horse-trading deal with Jean-Jacques Cellier. Prêtre would desist to apply for the job of pastor of Orvin. In return, Cellier promised to pay to Prêtre an annual compensation fee of 15 Ecus if he should win the opening pastor’s position. This fee would continue to be due annually until such time as Prêtre would find another position of equal or higher standing as Cellier´s. Furthermore, Cellier would subsequently desist to compete with Prêtre for any other job opening until Prêtre had found a position of equal or higher standing.

The scheming worked, and Cellier was confirmed as pastor of Orvin. Jean-Jacques had proven to his uncle that he was worthy of his respect. Soon after, Jean-Jacques married Anne Marguerite Peyer im Hoff, a girl from Schaffhausen, who bore him six children. She was a remarkable woman. We can read in [2] that, after the death of her husband in 1765, Anne Marguerite moved to La Neuveville, which had become her place of citizenship through her marriage to Jean-Jacques Cellier, where she was appointed director of the local girls’ orphanage, an unusual career for a Swiss woman in those days.

Jean-Jacques Cellier was quite a character. We can read in [1] that, shortly after Cellier’s appointment as pastor of Orvin, a dispute broke out between the followers of the Abbot of Ergüel and those of the Bishop of Basel. The Ergüelists complained about how justice was done in the Ergüel. They wanted more autonomy and less interference by the bishop (sounds familiar?). In particular, they complained about the arrogant behavior of the bishop´s bailiff, a man by the name of Mestrezat, and his deputy whom they accused of ruling without listening to their arguments. On September 29, 1733, a reunion of Ergüelists took place in Courtelary. The debate got so heated that Mestrezat and his deputy had to save themselves by jumping out the window. The Ergüelists decided to no longer accept the authority of the bailiff and instructed their pastors to no longer say prayers for the bailiff in church.

Cellier was opposed to these revolutionary moves, sided with the bishop, and made enemies of a large section of the Ergüelists in this fashion. Only a few days later, on October 18, 1733, the bishop asked Cellier to preside over the installation of the new Mayor of Courtelary, Jean Huguelet of Vauffelin who had been nominated for the job by the bishop. The Ergüelists protested this nomination. They claimed that the bishop had no authority to nominate their mayor. Cellier was attacked for siding with the bishop and had to pull a gun, that he had carried to the reunion as a precaution, to save himself.

Thus Cellier got quickly into troubles with his newly acquired parish, a dispute that was not reconciled until 1738. Yet, Cellier was stubborn and braved the accusations and defamations until 1748, when he was offered the position of Pastor of the French church of Basle. The city of Basle is German-speaking but bordering on France, and there has always lived a sizable minority of French-speakers in Basle. A French church was thus established in Basle to serve the needs of that community.

Little is known about Cellier’s activities in Basle. His church books are available, but they don’t offer much insight into his work. We know that Cellier was quite a patriarch. He got into a dispute with his daughter Marie Clève Cellier, who had gotten married to a local man by the name of Johann Rudolf Meyer. As a consequence of that dispute, his daughter went to church elsewhere, and her first two children were baptized not by her father but by another pastor in a German-speaking church of Basel.

We also know that Jean-Jacques must have found it difficult to express his emotions. Whereas other pastors, when baptizing grandchildren of theirs, would refer to the children´s parent as “my son” or “my daughter,” Jean-Jacques never did this. He referred to his children by their names, like they were complete strangers. The church protocol was not to be broken by any personal considerations. Yet, if Jean-Jacques would have been any more soft-minded, he probably wouldn’t have survived his 16 years in Orvin.

Jean-Jacques became quite ill in the late 1750s, and there were long stretches when he couldn’t perform his duties as pastor. During his illness he finally reconciled his differences with his daughter, and so, she agreed to have her third child baptized in her father´s church, who however still wouldn’t refer to his daughter in any other way than by her name (trailer to this article). On November 15, 1764, Jean-Jacques had become so ill that he was forced to resign from his post. He died only a few months later on June 28, 1765.

His three sons became merchants. Two of them, Jean-Henri Cellier (1744-1787) and Jean Jacques Bernard Cellier (1739-?) were silk merchants. We know that, in 1759, they opened together a silk manufactory in Lörrach, just across the border in Germany, which however went bankrupt after a few years. After the death of his father, Jean-Henri Cellier, Al’s direct ancestor, moved to La Ferrière, a French-speaking township in the Jura region, where he worked as a watchmaker. He married Lydie Gagnebin, a girl from an influential family of that town. Her father, Abram Gagnebin, was a highly respected medical doctor and pharmacist in La Ferrière. For many years, he had been a close friend of Jean-Jacques Cellier and also of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

We don’t know what became of Jean-Jacques’ other sons, Jean Jacques Bernard Cellier and Jean Georges Cellier. They may have emigrated to Germany.

Since Jean-Jacques Cellier decided to become a pastor, he was forced to move out of La Neuveville. His children grew up in Orvin and later in Basel. Thus, they didn’t have as strong ties any longer to La Neuveville, their community of citizenship, and thus, Al’s branch of the Cellier family had left La Neuveville for good.

Sources:

[1] Michaud, A. (1923), Contributions à l’Histoire de la Seigneurie d’Orvin, Imprimerie Courvoisier, La Chaux-de-Fonds, pgs.58-60.

[2] Germiquet, J. (1888), Neuveville et ses habitants, Edition V. Michel, Porrentruy, p.98.

Jacques Cellier (1658-1718), Mayor of La Neuveville (1705-1714), sentenced to death for rebellion and sedition (1714)

In this article, I wish to report about the life of Jacques Cellier, Mayor of La Neuveville between 1705 and 1714, the best documented Cellier of La Neuveville of all times. Jacques was sentenced to death in 1714 by the Princely Court in Porrentruy for rebellion and sedition. The Prince (the Bishop of Basle, with seat in Porrentruy) converted his sentence to banishment from la Neuveville for life, i.e., Jacques wasn’t executed after all, but let me start from the beginning.

Jacques Cellier was born January 22, 1658 as the son of another Jacques Cellier (1630-?), who was also a politician. Already the older Jacques Cellier served the city for many years in the functions of notary public and secretary of the city.

The young Jacques Cellier thus grew up in a house, where politics were omnipresent. He married at the age of 18 into another influential family. He got married to Anne-Marie Petitmaître, who bore him two sons and two daughters. His first-born, Pierre Cellier (1677-1715), should become another influential politician. He would serve as notary public and as secretary to the court. I already reported about Pierre’s daughter Anne Françoise Crouzet(-Cellier) (1701-?) who, in 1722, was banned from La Neuveville for life (to the neighboring village of Le Landeron) because she had chosen to marry a Catholic. Jacques’s second-born son, François-Charles Cellier (1687-1755), became a famous goldsmith.

Jacques quickly acquired public office. Already at the young age of 16, on April 16, 1674, he was made notary public by his father. He would serve the public of La Neuveville in various functions for 40 years. He was elected member of the City Council in 1686. He was named Secretary of the City of La Neuveville in 1693. By 1705 he had climbed to the highest office, as he was inducted as Mayor of the City of La Neuveville, a position that he would then occupy until he fell from grace in 1714.

Jacques was a highly gifted politician. He performed all of his duties with precision and excellence and he earned the respect of his compatriots who fully stood behind him. As a Mayor, he enjoyed unconditional support by the majority of the Magistrate with a wide margin.

Jacques´ reign as Mayor fell into a time of growing independence of the bourgeoisie. In all cities of the Jura region, the waters were tested to check, how much local authority the City Councils could wring from the Prince, whose influence was waning. La Neuveville was no exception to the rule.

The Prince, Jean-Conrad de Reinach, mostly let them have it their way. He interfered rarely. As long as the citizens were able to resolve their differences locally, he let them proceed as they saw fit. Yet, every party in a dispute had the right to appeal to the Prince, i.e., if they were unhappy with a local ruling, they could request a review of their case by the Prince, and if and when this happened, the Prince ruled and subsequently enforced his rulings.

This also happened in a (quite trivial) case that occurred in La Neuveville in 1711. A City Councilor by the name of Baruc Gibollet (1642-1711), a medical doctor and surgeon by education, had drunk a bit too much during a banquet held to celebrate the completion of the annual audit of the finances of the city, and started an uproar that led to a scuffle in the Council Chamber where the banquet was being held.

The Magistrate, under instruction of Mayor Cellier, discharged the unruly doctor of all of his duties as City Councilor and Bearer of the Flag. In the meeting, where this happened, Gibollet continued to insult the other members of the Magistrate by expressing his opinion that they were all idiots ("donkeys"). The Magistrate did not allow this incident to pass without consequences and asked the Prince to charge Gibollet with slander. As the local Court of Justice was under the control of the Magistrate, the Prince instructed the Châtelain, François-George de Gléresse (1672-1740), the representative of the Prince in the City, to convene a special court apart from the Magistrate to investigate the affair. In the subsequent trial, the Châtelain not only confirmed the dismissal of Gibollet as public official, but furthermore decided to ban him for life from La Neuveville.

Gibollet wasn´t one to take no for an answer and appealed to the Prince, as he claimed that there had been irregularities in the procedure of the special court that deprived him of his rights to a due hearing. However, before the case was considered by the Prince, Gibollet died in the same year.

In 1713, the heirs of Gibollet renewed their appeal to the Prince, and since the pugnacious doctor had meanwhile passed away, the Prince decided to have the honor of Gibollet restored. He annulled the former rulings against Gibollet and asked the Magistrate to pay to the heirs of Gibollet reparation from the city coffers.

Now it was Mayor Cellier’s turn to explode. He claimed that the Prince had overstepped his authority and that he had no jurisdiction in this case. In my view, Cellier was clearly in the wrong. This is precisely what a court of appeal is there for: to rule when the locals cannot resolve their differences among themselves. Every party has a right to have their case reviewed by a higher court, but when this happens, all parties must adhere by the ruling of the higher court. You cannot turn around, if you don’t like the rulings of the higher court, and claim that the court had no authority to rule in this case. Without proper channels for appeal, there cannot exist a civilized society. If no appeals process is in place, the rule of the stronger will invariably prevail. Thus, the Prince was right to not let Cellier get away with this. It was in the interest of peace and order, and in the longer term, in the interest of the City of La Neuveville, that the rulings of the Prince were being upheld.

The Prince exercised extraordinary restraint. He sent two delegations to La Neuveville to try to convince the Magistrate that they were wrong, but they wouldn’t listen. They even rejected to receive the delegations of the Prince and remained on a course of full confrontation. Only at that time did the Prince invoke his own Court in Porrentruy to pass a ruling against the Magistrate of La Neuveville, and it was in that ruling that Jacques Cellier was sentenced to death, a ruling that was immediately thereafter converted by the Prince to banishment for life from La Neuveville.

By the time, the ruling was passed, Cellier and the five other Councilors who had been charged with rebellion and sedition had already fled the city to Gléresse (Ligerz), a village a few miles East of La Neuveville, a village that was under full Bernese control and therefore outside the jurisdiction of the Prince.

Berne intervened on behalf of the exiled, and by 1717, after a renewed upheaval, in which the entire Magistrate of La Neuveville was dismissed by the Prince, they were allowed to return to La Neuveville and were mostly rehabilitated. Jacques Cellier, however, never accepted that he had done anything wrong and died shortly thereafter, in the summer of 1718, a broken man.

There exist many accounts of this affair in the literature. The affair is very well documented in the archives of La Neuveville, and many a historian decided to bring this affair up in their description of the history of La Neuveville as an example of the evolving power struggle between the bourgeoisie and the bishop in the early 18^th century.

Two prominent accounts can be found in the 1914 book Histoire de La Neuveville by Gross and Schnider [1] and in the 1888 book Neuveville et ses habitants by Germiquet [2]. You can find the corresponding excerpt from the book by Gross and Schnider here together with my English translation.

Sources:

[1] Gross, A. and Ch.-L. Schnider (1979), Histoire de La Neuveville, Editions Slatkine, Geneva, reprint of the earlier 1914 edition, pgs 53-58.

[2] Germiquet, J. (1888), Neuveville et ses habitants, Edition V. Michel, Porrentruy, pgs. 61-77.

Balkan Melodie

As of today in a movie theater (hopefully) near you …

Marcel and Catherine Cellier traveled through Bulgaria and Rumania in the 1960s, where they discovered and learned to love the folk music of those countries. They brought that music back with them to Switzerland and made it known in Western Europe and the world.

A movie about their voyages and discoveries, entitled Balkan Melodie, hit the big screen here in Switzerland today. I don’t know whether this movie will be shown also in the U.S. and in Australia, but maybe it will. Anyway, I wanted to take this opportunity to alert you to it. Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANaTk9pvu1k) is a trailer.

Once more DNA testing

I just noticed that MyHeritage offers additional DNA tests to those advertized on the front page. They also provide tests that are more specific than the 12-marker tests. Available are a 37-marker and a 67-marker Y-DNA test. These are the same tests that FamilyTreeDNA offers. I also noticed that one of the videos shown on the MyHeritage website has been lifted from the FamilyTreeDNA website. It turns out that MyHeritage collaborate with FamilyTreeDNA rather than having established a DNA lab (and DNA database) of their own, i.e., their tests are in fact being processed by FamilyTreeDNA. This makes economical sense.

MyHeritage offers Y-DNA tests of three different strengths. These operate on the Y chromosome that is passed down from father to son, i.e., it establishes parentage strictly along the male line of inheritance. These tests are most useful in the context of genealogical research, as family names are in our societies passed down to the children from their fathers rather than their mothers. Since both Al and I ordered Y-DNA67 tests, i.e, DNA tests that look at 67 different alleles (markers) on the Y chromosome, and since our Y chromosomes are almost identical, we now know for a fact that there were no undocumented adoptions in either of our two branches of the family. Since our common male ancestor lived in the early 16^th century, this fact establishes the correctness of a large segment of the La Neuveville branches of the Cellier family tree.

There are also two different samples of members of the Junod family and one Chiffelle (or rather Schiffley) already on file in the FamilyTreeDNA database that exhibit almost identical Y chromosomes. All five of us participate in Carol Botteron’s “French Swiss project.”In order to complete the verification of the Cellier/Junod/Chiffelle trees, it would be great if more male members of these three families were to order such tests.

MyHeritage also offers three types of mtDNA tests. These are similar to the Y-DNA tests, but relate to mitochondrial DNA. The mitochondria are rings of DNA outside the nucleus of the cell. The father’s sperm doesn’t contain any mitochondria. Thus, the mitochondrial DNA of a person stems necessarily from his or her mother.The mtDNA test proceeds therefore strictly along the female line of inheritance. Two people with similar mtDNA test results (marker values) have somewhere in their past a common mother of mother of mother. Since traditionally, there has been a much higher mobility among women than among men (usually women moved into the households of their future husbands), this test is more likely to determine regional shifts of your ancestry on the female side.

Finally, MyHeritage also offers a Family Finder test. This is a more complex test that looks at multiple chromosomes to test along all lines of inheritance. This test may be particularly useful to find lost relatives … assuming that you have reasons to believe that they are also looking for you and might also order such a test.

DNA tests are always a shot in the blue, i.e., they don’t reveal anything useful, unless multiple related people take it. Thus, it is important to order the test from a company with a large database. FamilyTreeDNA is such a company. They are today the market leader in genealogical DNA testing.

Carol Botteron meanwhile checked back with FamilyTreeDNA. You can participate in the French Swiss project also if you order your DNA test through MyHeritage. Thus, whether you go through MyHeritage or FamilyTreeDNA doesn’t matter at all.

Some of you may feel uneasy about giving your DNA to a company for whatever purposes. Many of us, including people like myself, who are knowledgeable about information technologies (it’s my job), feel uneasy about the potential for abuse that modern information technology invariably entails. If you carry a cellular phone around (and most of us do), its GPS antenna can pinpoint your location to a few meters accuracy at all times. If you swipe your credit or debit card anywhere, you leave an electronic trail behind that can be traced back to your buying habits and your business partners and at least temporarily also to your physical location.

When biometric passports were introduced here in Switzerland a few years ago, many people opposed this. They travel within Europe on their national identity cards rather than using their passports, because these are less easy to trace, and because it is no-one’s business to know where they are or what they do. Yet, they happily open their notebooks and access the Internet on airports and in other public locations, because time is money and because it is convenient to do so. At home, they proudly connect their PC to the TV set and walk around with a wireless keyboard, where each keystroke can be easily intercepted by any one of their neighbors. They are worried about intrusion, but then, they protect their notebook that they start up in public locations with the same password that they use to protect their bank account – because it is inconvenient to have to remember more than one password and even worse, to remember, which of them they used where.

If you are worried that big brother is watching you, this worry is indeed justified. Let’s face it. Big brother is watching all of us constantly. If you don´t want this, then you cannot share into the conveniences of modern life. If you don´t wish to leave an electronic trail behind, then don´t use electronics. On the other hand, if you want to enjoy the conveniences of modern life (and you all do as otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to read this news article), be aware that you leave an electronic trail behind as wide as the wake of an aircraft carrier traveling at full speed.

The answer is not to prevent leaving a trail behind, but rather, to follow a few simple rules that will make it difficult for any intruder to abuse the information that he or she is able to dig up on you.

The first and most important rule is to never use so-called “speaking keys” as passwords. Your mother´s maiden name is not a good choice for a password to protect your bank account as this information can be retrieved within five minutes by any computer-savvy person. Your pet’s name is not a good choice either. Use only passwords than cannot be brought in connection with you by anyone except yourself.

The second rule is to remember at least two different passwords and two different passkeys (number codes), one each for sensitive and less sensitive information. Don´t give out the sensitive password and passkey to anyone.

The third rule is, not to store your sensitive passwords and passkeys on your computer. You are frequently asked by your operating system whether you wish your computer to remember your password. Never agree that your sensitive password and/or passkey are remembered.

The fourth rule is to be aware of the potential of identity theft. If you receive an email message from your cousin who is stranded in a hotel in Singapore because his brief case was stolen and now asks you to wire some money to him, be aware that, in all likelihood, this isn´t your cousin at all, but rather an impersonator who stole his identity. Always get independent corroboration first before responding to such a request. If you cannot independently verify the identity of your cousin, contact law enforcement.

Observing these few simple rules, you will likely never face any problems. Thus, the answer is not to frantically protect all information about yourself. You cannot. The answer is to be aware that some information about yourself is accessible to potential abusers, and behave in accordance with that knowledge. Genealogical websites, as this one, may make it easier for would-be impersonators to find out a few trivia about yourself and about your family, but knowing that this information is available (as it will be, irrespective of whether you are listed on a genealogical website or not), makes you less vulnerable to its abuse.

It is true that many organizations, when you call them on the phone, “verify” your identity by asking you for your date of birth and your mother´s maiden name, which is highly irresponsible. If you deal with a company, insist that they have a valid email address or cellular phone number for you on file and that, in the process of verifying your identity in a phone conversation, they send an email to you or call you on your cellular phone (using the information that they have on file, and not information that you provide to them during the phone call) before completing the handshaking procedure and granting you access to your account, unless they recognize your voice.

Will genealogical DNA testing enhance the potential for abuse? Is there a risk that you may be linked to a crime because of mistaken identity? Will potential employers or health/life insurance companies be able to use the available DNA information to determine that your application should be declined on the basis of your DNA profile?

When I first learned about DNA testing in the context of genealogical research (Al introduced me to this topic), I was myself very reluctant to agree to participate, because I didn’t know enough about the subject. The DNA tests used by law enforcement are much more specific than the tests used for genealogy. The former tests are designed to determine with very high probability parentage between a parent and a child or to link a suspect to a crime scene. DNA tests done for the purpose of genealogical research cannot do either of these things. They are not specific enough for such purpose. All that a potential “abuser” of your genealogical DNA test results could possibly do is to identify you as a Cellier (or Junod or Chiffelle) of the Jura region of Switzerland. Furthermore, every court on this planet will throw out DNA evidence if no witness comes forward who is willing to state under oath that this is indeed your DNA, i.e., a person who was present at the time the swabbing was done.

Furthermore, genealogical DNA samples are not usually stored under your real name. Most commonly, they are stored under the name of your earliest known male ancestor. For example, Al’s and my DNA tests are stored in the database under “Jehan Seillyer, abt 1500 – abt 1550.” A Cellier of Nods would most likely store his DNA under “Collet Cellier, abt 1500 – abt 1550.” Your email address may only be given out to other participants whose DNA samples match yours, and they won´t if you don´t explicitly agree to this.

Your DNA samples will be stored for several years so that you can order additional tests at any time without need to provide a new DNA sample. However, you can ask that your DNA sample be destroyed if you don’t want it to be stored.

I wouldn´t worry too much about abuse of the information by potential employers or insurance companies either. They cannot link the information in the database back to you (unless you publish your certificate in your own name, as I did), and even, if they do, the information is useless for their purposes. It is not specific enough.

Finally, if someone really wants to get a DNA sample from you without your consent, all they need to do is to wait until you throw away a paper towel or a cigarette butte. Thus, being aware of the potential of abuse of any type of information that one gives out is prudent. However, participating in a genealogical DNA test is not compromising your privacy to any significant degree and is not to be considered risky behavior in this context.

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.