33. Switzerland, our family trip in 1993

Exploring Switzerland in 1993

Eddie and I took our three young children (Benjamin, 16, Bryce, 12, Angelyn, 8) to Switzerland and Germany for three weeks.   We rented a 5-passenger sedan, a Peugeot, and made jaunts into areas where the Kriegs and Treuthardts had lived.    Those areas included Zweisimmen and Aubonne and Lausanne.   (Love those double consonants!)  

Zweisimmen (zwei = two) is situated at the confluence of the Simme and the Kleine Simme Rivers, thus it is "Two Simme's."   Being in Zweisimmen on a Sunday morning, we went to the village church and participated in a German service.   We made a mistake right away.   We sat in somebody's pew.    The family came in, stood at the pew and wondered what to do.   We offered to move, but they declined and sat in another place.    Benjamin was already taking German in high school and could understand the topic the pastor talked about.   The church is (of course!) all wood, and there is a large clock on the steeple.    The walls have old artwork painted on them, as well as Scripture verses (in German) written in large letters.   A lovely organ was being played masterfully for the liturgy and hymns.    At the offertory, and at the end of the service, the organist played while the people sat quietly.   (This doesn't happen so often in America, as people don't have that same etiquette for music.)  After the service we stayed awhile and talked to a couple of people, so they would know who we were.    

Also we walked around the cemetery and saw a few tombstones with Treuthardt names engraved on them.   Since these stones are relatively recent, we surmised that there were still Treuthardts living here.   Margaret had been to Zweisimmen before us, and she had found out that there were two elderly men named Treuthardt living a little ways apart from the town, who did not speak English.   That is more than 20 years ago.       

The "language line" was right outside Zweisimmen.   On one side of that line inside the village, the highway signs were in German.   On the other side, the highway signs were in French, which is what people spoke there.   Here were indications of the language fluency of the Treuthardts, and it is easy to see how the Treuthardts could speak more than one language.   What they really speak is the "Swiss" or rather Allemanisch, which is another subject.  

We drove around the north side of Lake Geneva, up to and through Aubonne briefly.    In the neighborhood, east of Aubonne is Morges, where there is a museum in a fortress called Château-arseneaux, Musée Militaire Vaudois -- The Military Museum of Canton Vaud.    We toured the museum and got an inkling of the history of the military of the Swiss, situated as they are in the middle of the continent with potentially hostile nations all around them.

With a name like Krieg (generally thought by our family to mean, "war"), we certainly felt right at home.

In Lausanne we walked to the Cathedral.   It is the largest Gothic cathedral in Switzerland, consecrated in 1275 A.D.   After admiring the interior architecture and art, and the large organ, we climbed a steep staircase to the roof of the Cathedral and marveled at the vistas of the surrounding Alps and Lake Geneva in the crisp air.   Lausanne retains the quaint ancient nightly practice of a watchman atop the cathedral in the middle of every night calling out the hours in all four directions, from 10:00 o'clock p.m. until 2:00 o'clock a.m.

Driving around the cities and country roads, seeing the beautiful countryside and taking in Swiss history and culture as we could, gave us a sense of what those people must have missed when they came to Texas.   Texas has its charms, but it doesn't have Alps and glacier valleys or crystal blue lakes and rivers and beautiful vistas at every turn.    These images were impressed in my mind as this family study progressed.

The Swiss people left Switzerland for Texas in the 1880's because of economic hardship and severe times.    We were visiting the same regions that the Treuthardts left 110 years earlier.
Thanks to Eddie for doing this trip for me!     

~Taken from my writing of April 27, 2004

"Friedrich Christian Treuthardt, 

the Family History Study for Great-Grandfather" 

 

But there is a twist to the reasons that the Treuthardts left Switzerland.    For them it was not all economic hardship.  

24. Aubonne, Switzerland to Le Havre, France

In August/September, 1883 the Treuthardt family left their home at Aubonne, Switzerland.  They would depart by steamship from the port of Le Havre, France, on an ocean voyage bound to America. 

From Aubonne to Le Havre, what route did they take?   A Google search for the shortest, straightest northwest route displays 44 separate directions for the trip of 696 kilometers (433 miles), through mountains and hills, bypassing the largest cities including Paris.  That route by car is a 7 hour drive.  The directions are complex, and one would need a navigator to give frequent instructions to the driver.    

Of this we may be sure, the Treuthardts did not take the "straight" route as directed by Google.   

Regardless of the route, by what modes of transportation did they travel to the coast of France?   The most likely answers are "diligence" and train.   

The means by which the Treuthardts left their home and made their way with their belongings to the nearest Swiss train station was likely the diligence, which we would call a stagecoach.  Below is a description, written in 1803, of a diligence.   
[Note the photograph of a diligence in Toulouse, France in 1899.]

The following information is from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagecoach

For a picture of a Postkutsche in Brig, Switzerland, see also 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Postkutsche_brig.jpg

A stagecoach is a type of covered wagon for passengers and goods. It is strongly sprung and drawn by four horses, usually four-in-hand. Widely used before the introduction of railway transport, it made regular trips between stages or stations, which were places of rest provided for stagecoach travelers. The business of running stagecoaches or the act of journeying in them was known as staging.

The stagecoach traveled at an average speed of about five miles per hour, with the total daily mileage covered being around 60 or 70 miles.   

Stagecoaches in Continental Europe

Diligencia that was used between
Igualada and Barcelona, Catalonia.
A dedicated luggage deck is on the roof

A diligence surmounted with its impériale
 in Toulouse, 1899

The diligence, a solidly built coach with four or more horses, was the French analogue for public conveyance, especially in France, with minor varieties in Germany such as the Stellwagen and Eilwagen. The diligence from Le Havre to Paris was described by a fastidious English visitor of 1803 with a thoroughness that distinguished it from its English contemporary, the stage coach.

A more uncouth clumsy machine can scarcely be imagined. In the front is a cabriolet fixed to the body of the coach, for the accommodation of three passengers, who are protected from the rain above, by the projecting roof of the coach, and in front by two heavy curtains of leather, well oiled, and smelling somewhat offensively, fastened to the roof. The inside, which is capacious, and lofty, and will hold six people in great comfort is lined with leather padded, and surrounded with little pockets, in which travellers deposit their bread, snuff, night caps, and pocket handkerchiefs, which generally enjoy each others company, in the same delicate depository. From the roof depends a large net work which is generally crouded with hats, swords, and band boxes, the whole is convenient, and when all parties are seated and arranged, the accommodations are by no means unpleasant. Upon the roof, on the outside, is the imperial, which is generally filled with six or seven persons more, and a heap of luggage, which latter also occupies the basket, and generally presents a pile, half as high again as the coach, which is secured by ropes and chains, tightened by a large iron windlass, which also constitutes another appendage of this moving mass. The body of the carriage rests upon large thongs of leather, fastened to heavy blocks of wood, instead of springs, and the whole is drawn by seven horses.^[7]

The English visitor noted the small, sturdy Norman horses "running away with our cumbrous machine, at the rate of six or seven miles an hour." At this speed stagecoaches could compete with canal boats, but they were rendered obsolete in Europe wherever the rail network expanded in the 19th century. Where the rail network did not reach, the diligence was not fully superseded until the arrival of the autobus.

~from Wikipedia, the article on "Stagecoach"

12. 1883, October 11, Williamson County Sun

This newspaper article of October 11, 1937 was printed in the Williamson County Sun.  The article reprinted an article that was published in 1883.    It states,

Mr. J. N. Price has sold his farm adjoining Georgetown

to Mr. Frederick Treuthardt, late of Aubonne, Switzerland.

Mr. Treuthardt will give his attention to raising grain,

vegetables, etc., at his new farm, in the selection of which

he has shown good taste and judgment.

He possesses considerable means, and was engaged in

the manufacture of powder in Switzerland.