SWISS SOURCES: Can the following sources be reliable?

+1 vote
306 views

I found these book source online that will take my Swiss ancestors all the way back to the 1100s. How reliable is it? I am only finding online archival resources back to 1550. Are these books good sources for medieval Swiss genealogy please?

Sources:

1.  Book: "Snively - Snavely The Swiss Ancestors and
American Descendants of Johann Jacob Schnebele (1659-1743) and
Other Snivelys and Snavelys of Southeastern Pennsylvania"
compiled by Elizabeth F. Washburn, 1986, page 1;  

 2.   Book: "Die Schnewli Von Affoltern Am Albis" by Ernst Albert Lincke, 1939;

in Genealogy Help by Living Troy G2G6 Pilot (176k points)

Can't view the content of the books, but the gist of it seems to be here

http://www.friendsofallencounty.org/ellingham/descendtext.php?personID=I12793&tree=Ellingham&display=block&generations=8

I'm guessing that Washburn takes the line wholesale from the Lincke book.

There seem to be RootsWeb threads, which are currently down.

 

Thank you! So it looks like Lincke is the better or more original source.

I found this source on the Allen County site last night, and it ithe tree s also copied at rootsweb on the Tim Dowling Genealogy page. I first saw the tree on geneanet.com. But I want to be careful before adding anything to wikitree that does not include a link to primary source documentation.

So now I guess I need to find out where Lincke got his sources. In 1939, he would have had to do really old fashioned style genealogy, but maybe he lived in Switzerland and had access to the archives.

As I always say, More Research is Necessary :)

Sharon

Ancestry has the Lincke book, in German, but they want me to upgrade.

FamilySearch has it online but only at a Center.

Something about it here

https://books.google.com/books?id=F9h4eg1KHk4C&pg=PA664

which only tells me that I wasted my time doing German in school.

 

Thanks for the link to the German information.:)  I never did take German in school, but have studied it on my own to where I can read some of it. I am seeing references to Offenbach as well as to Affoltern, so this looks like it may be of some value. I may have to ask Google translate to help me with some of the German tho. At least this is printed German and not that old Gothic handwriting I have been struggling with for decades :)
This link is actually an outstanding resource. It is a book written by a woman who lived in Knonau, Zurich, Switzerland and seems to have researched the Affoltern Church Registers. Unfortunately, she passed away in 1951, but her information may be just what we need. Thanks again!
You can dowload the link as a PDF using the cog in the yop right of the link and from there you can use your favourite translation engine to copy and paste section out to read it
Thank you! I will try that!

Sharon

2 Answers

+6 votes
 
Best answer
Books can be reliable,only if they supply birth,death.marriage records.

If they are not substantuated be wary.
by Wayne Morgan G2G Astronaut (1.1m points)
selected by Living Troy
Thank you! I have never seen this book, so I don't know what it contains. I was hoping someone on wikitree had seen it or has a copy. It is used as a source for an online genealogy.

 

Sharon
Hi Sharon
I only came across this posting now. I could get the second book at my library. Do you still need it? Should I just check if it seems reliable for the beginning?
Anything you can find that looks relevant would be great. Perhaps you can just take a photo of important pages especially the title, contents, and and any data pertaining to the Schnebli's if it is not an overwhelming amount? If there is an index, the entry for Schnebli would be a good thing to photo as well. Thank you!
Sorry that it took so long - that was quite a journey. I tought I could order the book via courier, but it was only for use in the reading room, which was still closed in February. So I tried to get it over interlibrarian loan, but ours has so much to do due to Covid, that they asked me to hold the request back. But then it came to my mind that it is a swiss book, so I could have a look at it after a meeting at the national library :-D.

Anyway: to be honest, it does not look very reliable to me for data prior to church books. It doesn't have a table of contents, it starts right away with text, then has several smaller family trees to pop up.
At the back it has some sort of listed (male?) index with lots of data (unsourced) and an index of women who married in that has abbreviations to link to their pop up family tree. The sources are less than one third of a page and names like "Stammtafel Schneeli", "Alemania" (which I think is a journal, but who knows what he meant or which  issue of which year he used), or "Steuerbücher" (tax books).

If you wish, please PM me and I can send you the picture of the sources. I guess, most sources would be available at the Staatsarchiv Zürich, as I know some of them are traditional sources to get prior to the church books in Switzerland. Of course you can't always get a confident connection, depending on the information that you find (e.g. with some luck you might find a will or purchase contract, but how do you know for sure that Hans with his son Uli really is your ancestor and not his cousin?).
Thank you J. Caruso. I gave this answer the star because of your thoughtful reply!

Sharon Troy Centanne
+5 votes
The oldest church books for Affoltern I can find listed start in 1567. All that means is that whatever sources Lincke cites need to be looked at carefully.
by Helmut Jungschaffer G2G6 Pilot (606k points)

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