Sunday, February 26, 2012

Historical Twitter Feed


On NPR the other morning, I heard of someone sharing a famous author's work in 140 character tweets. The name of the author escapes me now, but I though the idea was a good one.



Last week I started to tweet historical passages from my great-great-grandfather Henri de Büren's letters and journals of his voyage through the Americas. I will tweet his observations in chronological order from 1852 Boston to 1854 Santarém. Please follow the journey @henrideburen

The Travel Visa

eBay is turning into a wonderful resource for family documents, who knew? The latest find concerns again, Louis de Büren, Bernese Governor of Lausanne. The document ia a travel visa for the extended lands of the canton Bern, and the city of Lausanne for one Etienne Faure. The visa was initially authorized on August 4th, 1794 and good until October 17th, 1794.

Five days after it was approved it was revoked by Louis on August 9th, 1794. It is possible that the subject of this document could be the same Etienne Faure who was the Treasurer of Dauphiné at the time. The Dauphiné is a former province in southeastern France, whose area roughly corresponded to that of the present departments of Isère, Drôme, and Hautes-Alpes. Given the fact that this document was available after all this time and in good condition, it seems clear that Mr. Faure's visa was never granted.

The text in French:

Il est permis à Etienne Faure, de Die en Dauphiné de séjourner jusqu'au 1ere octobre, 1794 dans le Canton de BERNE & et nommément à Lausanne sauf l'agrément à obtenir de qui il appartiendra. Ce terme écolué, on aura soin de se pourvoir d'une nouvelle permission, sous peine d'être renvoyé du pays. La présente permission devra être produite chaque fois que le porteur en sera requis.
Donné ce 4 août, 1794.
De la part de la Commission ayant la surveillance des Etrangers. signé Gruber


(Note from Louis)
... charge de vous dire qu'on ne prolongera plus cetter permission. ... de vous en prevenir Château de Lausanne. Le 9 août, 1794. signé de Büren






Saturday, February 4, 2012

Tales from the Armoire



I have followed the blog Newly Swissed for a while now. I have found it to be informative and fun. The site is described thusly: "Newly Swissed helps you stay up to date with trends in Switzerland. You can expect high quality coverage from an insiders’ view in the departments of culture, design, food, tourism, and simply cool facts!"




The founder of the site and I began talking about all things Swiss and one day I floated an idea of writing a multi-part series on my family history and research.  He thought it was a nice idea and so it began. All of my posts of Tales from the Armoire – A Multi-Part Series on Finding Identity through Family History are now live. I appreciate the opportunity to share my Swiss family stories with a new audience. Thank you Newly Swissed!

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