Doug Schorey's pages within SwissGen
When I looked around for information on genealogical research Switzerland on
the internet for the first time, in 1996, there were only 3 sites of general
interest available:
- The "German Genealogy Server" with some general information on
Switzerland.
This has grown into "Swiss Genealogy on the
Internet (SwissGen)".
- Tim Philipp's pages with detailed information on several regions,
especially Grisons (Graubünden). Later this information formed the starting
point of SwissGen's cantonal information. Tim
is now concentrating on Graubünden
and his personal
genealogy.
- Doug Schorey's pages with some general information plus a "Swiss
Surname List" and a list of professional researchers providing service
in Switzerland. The general information was later gradually integrated into SwissGen,
with the two mentioned lists staying online separately, but no longer
maintained; these two lists have now been withdrawn, as this type of
information is only useful if up-to-date.
- If you are looking for professional help in Switzerland, the Central
Information Office of the Swiss
Genealogical Society will provide you with a list of professionals
upon request.
- The "Swiss
Surname List" contained addresses of some 700 researchers worldwide,
interested in thousands of families. Such a compilation was the method
of choice at the time, but today (with email being misused by spammers
sending mails to all addresses found by "address harvesters")
static web pages are no longer state-of-the-art. Instead databases make
this sort of information available, like several databases
run by the "German Genealogy Server", which also contain some
Swiss information, especially FoKo
and GedBas. Whilst
the search screens are (for the time being) in German only, they are
hopefully pretty self-explanatory for the non-German speaker as well.
You are still invited to visit Doug's personal
genealogy web pages.
The above mentioned databases can be very useful to get you started,
especially if you are lucky - but they will never replace your own genealogical
research. If you want to start with your own research, you'll find some help on