Since this «Caricom Compilation» is more and more developing into a comprehensive description of overall Swiss involvement in colonialism and transatlantic slavery, I am also including some areas beyond the Caribbean in order to facilitate research. Moreover, historians have always pointed out that transatlantic chattel slavery was one single economic system and that there were numerous relationships and links between the core Caribbean and the slave-based economies of North and South America. Thus, Charleston and surrounding areas in South Carolina were first settled with three shiploads of emigrants from Barbados and Bermuda. The «plantation lifestyle» imported from the Caribbean certainly insisted on the use of slavery, and Charleston quickly became the port-of-entry for the majority of all black slaves into the English colonies. How interconnected the slavery-economies of North America, the Caribbean and Brazil (and beyond) were, is also demonstrated by the fact that several Swiss families globalised into more than one space: Escher, Huguenin, Flournoy, Rosenberg(er), Prevost and Fatio (North America and Caribbean), Treytorrens, von Waldkirch and Stürler (West Indies and East Indies), De Meuron and Staehelin (Caribbean and Brazil), Cazenove/Cazeneuve, Zollikofer, and Zübli/Zubli/Zubly (Caribbean, North America and East Indies), and Diodati/Burlamacci (Cape Colony, Dutch East Indies).
3.1 North America
(The Thirteen Colonies and the United States)
To be involved in slavery could mean ownership of plantations, ownership of slaves, activities in the slave-trade, profiting from trade with slavery-based commodities, and fighting on the Confederate side in the Civil War (where many Southern officers took their servants, i.e. their slaves with them). Preceding all of this was the displacement, enslavement, or killing of indigenous people in order to win land for settlements and plantations. In this part of the archive it is often difficult to assign members of Swiss emigrant families and their descendants to one particular state, because they tended to move to another area over time, in some cases even to a third place. All in all, about 25,000 Swiss immigrants settled in the United States between 1700 and 1776, and they directed their course mainly to Pennsylvania and Carolina, which they commonly believed to be parts of the West India Islands.
The following officers with Swiss backgrounds fought in the Civil War on the Confederate side and are listed here because they cannot really be attributed to one state or region: George A. Euler from Basel-Stadt was captain and commander and Samuel Fasnacht from Fribourg Confederate first lieutenant of the Swiss Guard of Sharpshooters, Third Regiment, European Brigade, Louisiana Militia («Garde Française»). Felix Kirk Zollicoffer von Altenklingen (1812–1862) from the «Georgian branch» or «georgische Linie» of a St.Gallen / Thurgau family gained military experience as a second lieutenant in the Second Seminole War (1835–1842), when the US government tried to relocated 4,000 Seminole people and most of their 800 Black Seminole allies in Florida. He became a brigadier general and led the first Confederate invasion of eastern Kentucky. He was killed in action, and a monument was erected for him near Nancy, Kentucky, in 1910. Joseph Eberle (1828–1877), born in Walenstadt, Canton of St.Gallen, emigrated to Texas and served as a confederate captain or major in the Arkansas Infantry. Getulius Kellersberger (1820–1900) from Baden in the Canton of Aarau (Berne) emigrated to New York and served the Confederacy as chief engineer in East Texas. He moved his engineering companies and a thousand slaves to fortify and obstruct rivers and streams of his district. In Galveston, 1,000 slaves and 300 (non-English speaking) German mechanics were put at his disposal. In March 1863, Major Kellersberger was ordered to Sabine Pass with thirty engineers and 500 slaves to build a new fort in order to block access to Galveston. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1865. He returned to Switzerland after the war and was the only Confederate veteran among the sixteen men who attended the first of two meetings of Civil War veterans that convened in Luzern in January 1899. He died in Baden, where he is buried.
Having said this, one must also point out that even more officers with Swiss backgrounds fought on the side of the Union.
=> Ulrich Maron (born 1828) from Berlingen am Untersee in the Canton of Thurgau did an apprenticeship as a tanner. After two journeyman years, business was low and he allowed himself to be recruited as a mercenary for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In 1859, the Swiss regiments in foreign service were disbanded, and on his way home, Maron entered the service of the Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger (Royal Netherlands East Indies Army). Soon, he was among the best sharpshooter in Batavia. In 1864, he paid a short visit to his home village of Berlingen before moving on to become a plantation overseer in the USA. In the country which was in the midst of the Civil War, he fell ill with malaria and returned to his home in the canton of Thurgau, which (according to an obituary) saved his life. In 1869, he took the job of housekeepr/caretaker in the «Institut Zollikofer», a girls› boarding school in Romanshorn, where he stayed for many years.
3.1.1 Alabama
=> Members of the Ott family from Guttannen (BE) migrated from Orangeburgh to Alabama, where in 1860, they are recorded as owning 46 slaves.
=> John F. Phifer (*1810), grandson of Martin Phifer Jr. (1756–1837) from North Carolina, owned 68 slaves on a cotton plantation in Lowndes, Alabama.
=> Members of the Rumpf family from the Canton of Berne migrated from Orangeburgh to Alabama: Thomas David Rumph in 1823 later James D. Rumph. In 1860, the family was recorded to have owned 229 slaves.
=> Schläppi/Slappy/Slappey from Meiringen, Canton of Berne: In 1860 they are registered among the large slaveholders.
=> Rebsamen/Rebsome/Turnipseed from Turbenthal, Canton of Zurich: Bartholomew Turnipseed (b. 1818) was a son of Jacob Turnipseed, worked as a medical doctor and became the founder of the Alabama branch of his family. One Daniel Turnipseed owned 79 slaves on his estate. In 1860, the family was recorded to have owned 46 slaves.
=> Wettstein/Whetstone from Illnau, Canton of Zurich: Henry Whetstone, descendant of Hans Wettstein, moved from Orangeburgh to Alabama. In 1860, the Whetstone family of Alabama was recorded to have owned 230 slaves.
=> Irvin Holman Zimmermann (1813-1858) from a Zurich family was a wealthy doctor and plantation owner in Alabama. In 1850, 66 slaves were registered on a plantation belonging to Thomas J. Zimmermann and Charles P. Zimmermann.
=> Abraham Maury de Graffenried (1784–1859) from a family originally from Berne was one of the early settlers of Lawrence County, Alabama, where he was a large landholder.
=> According to the 1850 State Census, William Sturkey, who had left South Carolina with his household, owned 6 slaves in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
=> Robert Flournoy (1826-1896) originally from a Geneva family of Huguenots, married Eugenia Moffet (1836–1902) in 1855, and the couple lived in Russell County, Alabama, on acquired and inherited land. According to Jacqueline Jordan Irvine of Emory University («From Cotton to Coca-Cola: A Family History Case Study on the Limitations of Higher Education to Close the Generational Wealth Gap») stolen Creek Indian land and slave labour in the 1800s were the sources of intergenerational wealth for four connected White families from bordering Alabama and Georgia counties – among them the Moffetts and the Flournoys. «With the federal government gifts of stolen Indian land and slave labour and subsequent inheritances, marriages among them, kinship relationships, and nepotism, the four White families for centuries acquired and maintained wealth, privilege, and influence that have continued to benefit significantly their descendants.» The 1860 census recorded that Henry Moffett (1795-1860) owned 96 slaves in 22 slave houses; his son-in-law, Robert Flournoy, had 83 slaves in 35 slave houses; and Henry’s son, Charles, had 17 slaves in 6 houses. Together the Moffett-Flournoy family owned thousands of acres of land and 200 slaves in 63 quarters.
3.1.2 Arkansas
=> In 1850, one William H. Zollicoffer from a Swiss family originally from St.Gallen/Thurgau owned one 45-year-old male slave in Jefferson, Arkansas.
3.1.3 California
=> Johann August Sutter (1803–1880) was a German-born Swiss immigrant of Mexican and American citizenship, who is well known for establishing his private colony «New Helvetia» ( Sutter’s Fort) in the area that would later become Sacramento, California, the state’s capital. Sutter had enslaved native Americans of the Miwok and Maidu tribes and Hawaiians (Kanakas) to work for him. If native Americans refused work, Sutter responded with violence: He had them whipped in the middle of his fort. He traded in native American slaves, especially children. He kept 600–800 indigenous people in a state of absolute slavery. At night, they were locked up in barren rooms with no beds and no toilet facilities. There are indications by his overseer Heinrich Lienhard (1822–1903), who came from Bilten (Canton of Glarus), that Sutter kept a whole group of indigenous women and girls to be of sexual service to him.
3.1.4 The Carolinas
Between 1732 and 1744, more than a thousand German speaking Swiss emigrated to the Carolinas, motivated by reports of opportunities and wealth. A Swiss immigrant remarked in 1737 that «Carolina looks more like a Negro country than a country settled by white people.» Quite a few of those Swiss immigrants became wealthy and respected planters, making their way into the élite of the South. In Switzerland, the trend towards emigration was so big that people talked about the «Carolina Rabies» or the «Carolina Fever», with some cantons encouraging migration, some advising against or or even prohibiting it. Granting land to these settlers on their arrival (from 40 acres per person upwards) meant displacing, fighting and sometimes enslaving the local indigenous Americans. The main settling areas or «Swiss» or partly «Swiss» colonies in the Carolinas were New Berne (today Craven County in North Carolina), Purrysburg (today Jasper County on the South Carolina bank of the Savannah River), French Santee (along the banks of the Santee River, 40 miles north of Charleston, South Carolina), New Windsor Township (opposite Augusta on the Savannah River, later Orangeburgh District, South Carolina, where present-day towns of North Augusta and Beech Island are situated), and Amelia Township on the south side of the Congaree River (later Orangeburgh District, today Calhoun County, South Carolina).
In many cases, it has not been possible to establish slave ownership already in the first generation of Swiss immigrants. But it is highly unlikely that allotted lands of 300, 400 or 500 acres could have been cultivated without enslaved labour. 1 acre either equals 4,294 square meters (as in the Caribbean) or 4,047 square meters (as in British North America). In either case, a 500 acres estate would correspond to over 2 million square meters. It has to be added that the land granted to Swiss immigrants was by no means «no man’s land», but it had been home to the Congaree Tribe in the Calhoun County area, for example.
=> Christoph von Graffenried (1661–1743) from a Bernese patrician family was influenced by the reports of compatriot Franz Louis Michel (ca. 1680–1714) about prospects in the «New World». Von Graffenried sailed to Carolina in 1710, founded the colony of «New Berne», thus displacing an American Indian town named Chattoka, became a slave-owner, and fought the Tuscaroras in a war that claimed some 400 native lives. He returned to Switzerland in 1714, but his son Christopher DeGraffenried Jr (1691-1742) stayed in British America and became the founder of a widespread family, many of them slaveholders. Tscharner Hobson DeGraffenreid (1806–1860), Christopher de Graffenreid Jr.’s grandson, owned the «opulent» plantation Oakland on Sandy River im Chester County, South Carolina. The 1860 Slave Schedule registered 108 slaves there. His sister Sarah DeGraffenreid married Richard Evans Kennedy (1811-1855), who also owned a plantation in Chester County. In 1860, there were slave 123 slaves registered there. John Baker DeGraffenried (1823-1899) owned Alston-DeGraffenried Plantation with 47 slaves west of Pittsboro in Chatham County, North Carolina. He was married to Delia Alston (1829-1914), daughter of one of the area’s biggest plantation and slave-owners. At the centre of the plantation stood the plantation house, known today as DeGraffenreidt-Johnson House and listed in the National Register of Historic Places as one of the finest examples of the Greek Revival style in the county. Allen deGraffenreid (1794–1844) was a widower and a wealthy planter and slaveholder in Chester County. «Yellow John», a runaway slave of his, murdered him in 1844, and with two other slaves, robbed the house. The three were captured, tried, and executed on the gallows.
=> Martin Stähelin (1714–1756) from a patrician Basel family was a a merchant and a tobacco-producer, who, after a bankruptcy and time in prison, emigrated to «New Berne» in 1753.
=> Pierre Robert (II) (1656–1715) from St Imier, Neuchatel, immigrated to South Carolina with his wife Jeanne Braye and his son Pierre Jr. (1675–1731), who was born in Basel. They settled in the Beaufort Disctrict in 1686, then moved further north to French Santee. They were granted 500 acres of land by the Lord Proprietors, and Pierre Robert became the first Huguenot pastor in South Carolina. Until the Revolutionary the principal occupation of the Huguenot settlers was the culture of rice and indigo. «Long cane» cotton was introduced in to the province as late as 1770. Jacques (James) Robert (1711-1774), son of Pierre Jr., became wealthy and at one time owned four plantations in Santee, South Carolina. He operated a store at the same time. A year after his death, his widowed wife Sarah (Jaudon) Robert moved with most of her children and other members of her family to Black Swamp, near the Savannah River. There they founded the town of Robertville. Six of her seven children reached maturity, married and left numerous descendants in Virginia, Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas.
=> In 1739, brothers Jeremiah (1716–1774), Simeon (b. 1719 or 1720) and Christianus Theus (1717– ca. 1791) from Felsberg in the Canton of Grisons, emigrated from Chur (GR) and arrived in the Carolinas, probably with their parents Simeon Theus and Anna Walser. Jeremiah became a portrait painter popular among plantation owners (like the Balls, Elliotts, Gibbeses, Heywards, Manigaults, Mazycks, Ravenels, and Habershams), of whom he must have painted around 200 portraits. When he died, he left a house in Charleston, a plantation in Orangeburgh and 7 slaves. His brother Simeon became a merchant and a landowner, his brother Christianus a Presbyterian minister and a landowner, too. One of their descendants, one James J. Theus from Beaufort, South Carolina, is registered in 1860 with 33 slaves.
=> Heinrich Escher-Zollikofer (1776–1853), father of Swiss industrialist and politician Alfred Escher (1819-1882), travelled to the USA with Hans Conrad Hottinger (17641841) in 1793. He stayed there as agent of «Hottinguer & Cie» until 1806. In 1804 he went to South Carolina, where he traded in cotton, tobacco, rice and coffee, and became immensely rich. 1806-1812 he worked for Hottinger’s company in Paris; 1812-1814 he was back in the USA, where he held a share in «one of the best tobacco plantations» (Escher) on the James River (Virginia). Escher knew Washington and Jefferson personally and corresponded with Secretary of War John Armstrong.
=> Jacob Christopher Zollikofer (1686-1779) from St.Gallen was Justice of the Peace and administrating landlord of the Castle and territories of Altenklingen (TG) and Pfauenmoos (SG). He emigrated to Virginia in 1717, then moved on to Halifax, North Carolina. In the 1760s, there was a rumour that he had died, whereupon several people – among them his son Captain George Zollicoffer from New Berne – testified that the «Switzer» of that name he was alive and well. Jacob Christopher Zollikofer became the founding father of a widespread family in British North America and the USA (Halifax, North Carolina / Maury and Nashville, Tennessee / Lafayette and Attala, Mississippi / Ellis and Hillsboro, Texas / Jefferson, Arkansas) many of them slaveholders. The Slave Census of 1850 lists 63 slaves owned by members of the Zollicoffer family. Moreover, there a numerous black Zollicoffers now in the US.
=> Jean (John) Conrad Zollickoffer (1742–1795) from St.Gallen arrived in America in 1777. He was a captain in the service of the French king and then a merchant in Baltimore. He was a cousin of Jacob Christopher Zollikofer. Before emigrating to America, he was closely associated with Pierre-Frédéric Dobrée, a merchant and shipowner from Nantes who supported the American Revolution, with the companies of «Schweighauser & Dobrée», which imported tobacco, sugar, coffee, tea, and cotton from the colonies, and with Deucher (a prominent banker in Paris, orginally from the Canton of Thurgau) and «Riedy & Cie.» (a large-scale slave-ship owner, orginally from Bâle). Moreover, Zollickoffer belonged to the same loge St-Germain as the slave-trader Prosper Charet and did business with him. Those Nantes connections still worked for Zollickofer after his emigration. In America, Zollickofer corresponded with George Washington.
=> George Bankcroft Zollicoffer (1738–1815) of Halifax County, North Carolina, stated in his will that his estate, i.e. «negroes and stock, household and kitchen furniture, plantation utensils, together with what money is due me in Switzerland» should be divided between his wife Anne Zollicoffer (1753–1827) and his five children John Jacob, George Bankcroft, James, Julius Hieronymus, and Anne. His wife Anne in her will of 1827 stated that «the four negroes Henry, Isham, Virgel and Horris and all my crop of corn, fodder and wheat and all my stock of horses, cattle and hogs» should go to her son James Zollicoffer.
=> Julius Hieronymous Zollicoffer(1786 – ca. 1854) decreed in his will manumission of his slaves Tom, Dick and Lydia with her two children Henry and Ritter, and of the child or children of the girl Ritter due to be born soon. For historians of slavery, manumission of an individual female slave and her children by testament usually points to an illegitimate relationship of whatever kind (rape, tactical relationship, love). Zollicoffer bequeathed his manumitted slaves the sum of 1000 $ for them to be transferred to a free state. His other slaves Horace, Jesse, Julia, Mack and Weldon were to be equally divided between his three children Jerome Bonaparte, Emily Caroline, and George.
=> Jean-Pierre (Hans Peter) (de) Pury (1675 – 1736) from Neuchâtel worked as a corporal for the Dutch East India Company. In 1718 he published Mémoire sur le Pays des Cafres and la Terre de Nuyts, in which he developed a concept of twelve climates between the North Pole and South Pole. He held the fifth climate (approximately 33 ° latitude) best for colonization. He hoped to be granted permission to start his own colonies in Australia or Southern Africa. His focus was on viticulture, and he propagated the use of slaves who would profit from the contact with civilisation. When his projects were dismissed, he left Batavia for France. He then developed a new colonisation project in South Carolina, and in 1724 suggested to the Duke of Newcastle to send 600 Swiss soldiers to the colony, who would breed silkworms as well as cultivate hemp and flax. These soldiers should, according to (de) Pury, be ready at one hour’s notice to fight against the «Indians» who often attacked the colony and destroyed plantations. In 1731, he sailed to North America and chose the area for the foundation of Purrysburg. In the colony settled by Swiss-French Huguenots, Swiss-German Lutherans, and Austrian and Italian protestant refugees, he owned and traded with slaves. The colony was relatively unsuccessful, and Pury died of malaria in 1736.
=> Johannes Tobler (1696–1765) from Appenzell Ausserrhoden emigrated to South Carolina and in 1737 founded a colony in the Orangeburgh/New Windsor area. He became a slave-owner himself and reported back to Switzerland in the Appenzeller Kalender in 1754:
«In South Carolina and its surroundings there is still a lot of good land left, and there are only few inhabitants […]. At the moment you pay for 100 acres of land or for a negro only half a Batz (Swiss currency) of your money. In wartime, the prices might be one third higher.»
In 1737, his father Ulrich Tobler is mentioned as having been granted 250 acres in New Windsor.
=> In his book «Der arme Mann im Tockenburg» (The pauper in the Toggenburg valley), first published in 1789, Ulrich Brägger (peasant, cotton spinner, weaver, middleman in the putting-out system) wrote about two of his neighbours:
«This is what I knew then: They were both heavily in debts and were hoping to be liberated from them by the end of the world; at least I often heard them talk about Newfoundland, Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia, some other time there were talking about getting away, about escape from captivity in Babylon, about costs of travel and such things.»
=> Members of the following non-aristocratic families emigrated to the Carolinas where they became plantation and slave owners:
• Am Acher / Amaker from Meiringen, Canton of Berne: In 1736, Hans Amaker received 300 acres for a plantation in Orangeburgh SC. Large plantations using slave labor were established in Orangeburg in the nineteenth century, and the county became a major producer of cotton. In 1860, there were 108 Europeans, 16,583 slaves, and 205 free Blacks in Orangeburgh District 8. Descendants of Hans Amaker owned 109 slaves in 1860.
• Bachmann/Baughman/Bookman/Bakman from Elgg (Canton of Zurich): Johann Jacob Bachmann (b. 1696) arrived in South Carolina in 1743 and was granted 200 acres in Craven County in 1749. His son William Jacob Bookman (1721–1778) with his wife Anna owned 5 slaves. Daniel, Joseph and Jesse Bookman, were fourth generation Americans and third generation in the Dutch Fork Section of South Carolina. The Bookmans had been there over 100 years, and now they were large slaveowners. In the 1869 Slave Census, members of the Bookman family are registered with 85 slaves.
• Bourquin/Bourguin from Switzerland (possibly from Sonceboz, Berne): They came to South Carolina in 1732 with Colonel John Pury and settled in Purysburg (also spelt Purrysburg). Henry François Bourquin (1693–1778) and Dr. Jean (John) Baptiste Bourquin (1691–1784) were probably brothers. John Baptiste was granted 300 acres, and one Mary Bourquin (probably his wife) 100 acres. John Lewis Bourquin Jr. was a merchant and a planter in Purysburg and the leader of the Bourquin community. He inherited from his father, Colonel John Lewis Bourquin (who had owned 45 slaves in 1794) a substantial estate of 26 slaves. Other members of the family moved to Georgia.
• In the postwar years, there was a dramatic increase of slave ownershop in Purysburg. According to the 1790 Slave Census, families with slave ownership were the Saussy (15), Waldburger (20), the Winkler (21), the Humbert (37), the Stroubhart (43), Cornelius Dupont (62), and David Erhardt (114). Who among them was of Swiss (and not French or German descent) has yet to be established.
• Denzler / Dantzler from Illnau, Canton of Zurich: Via Savannah (Georgia), the family arrived in Orangeburgh SC in 1752 and Hans Ulrich Dantzler received 400 acres for a plantation. In 1770, one John Henry Dantzler received 200 acres, in 1794, one John Dantzler 200 acres. Dr. Lewis H. Dantzler (1813 – 1878) was granted 704 acres in 1846 and built a plantation house that can still be seen today. Olin Miller Dantzler (1826–1924), son of Jacob M. Dantzler and a direct descendant of Hans Ulrich, was a rich plantation owner in St. Mathews, Calhoun County, Orangeburgh District. In 1860, he owned 101 slaves. He was a member of the House of Representatives and later of the Senate of South Carolina. He fought in the Civil War on the Confederate side. In 1864 he held the rank of colonel in the 22nd South Carolina Regiment. He was killed in action in 1864. In 1860, the descendants of Hans Ulrich Dantzler were registered as owning a total of 571 slaves. There is still a Dantzler Street in Orangeburgh today.
• Eichelberger/Eickelberger originally from Wynau in the Canton of Berne: In 1752, Johann George Eichelberger (1729-1805) emigrated via Rotterdam to Charleston S.C. aboard the ship «Upton». He lived on a plantation near Pomaria, Dutch Fork, Newberry County, S.C. His grandson John Adam Eickelberger (1810–1896) lived on a plantation near Martin’s depot and in 1860 owned 108 slaves. He was married to Emma Lenora Long (1818 – 1896), whose grandfather George Lang/Long (1758–1815) had immigrated from Oberraat, Canton of Zurich, in 1752 on board the «Caledonia» and had written into his last will in 1815: «I give and bequeath unto my well beloved wife Catharine the plantation whereon I now live […] one negro fellow named Sam and one wench named Mina and two children Esther and Sarah».
• Felder from Wattwil in the Canton of St.Gallen and possibly also from Zurich: The family of Heinrich Felder (1725 –1780) emigrated to the American colonies, arriving about 1735. In later records he was referred to as Captain Henry Felder, planter. Ann Margaret (Felder) Hartzog (1774–1851) owned 22 slaves (1830 Census), 38 slaves (1840 Census), and 44 slaves (1850 Census) in Orangeburgh. Major John Myers Felder (1782–1851), whose grandfather was a native of Switzerland, was a United States politician and a lawyer. When he retired from the legal profession in 1830, he became a prosperous mill owner and planter. The 1850 Slave Census records him with 187 slaves. He owned the cotton plantation Midway. James Addison Felder (1841-1893) of Orangeburgh was a direct descendant in the fifth generation of Swiss immigrants to South Carolina. He served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. Descendants and relatives of the Felder family are also recorded in Georgia, Virginia, Florida, Texas, and Nevada. The 1869 Slave Census records some 1300 slaves belonging to somebody called Felder.
• Gallman/Coleman from Mettmenstetten, Canton of Zurich: In 1836, Hans Jacob Gallman received 350 acres for a plantation in Saxe Gotha in Orangeburgh SC. In 1860, his descendants in Newberry SC were registered as owners of 115slaves.
• Gyger/Geiger from the Rheintal area (later Canton of St.Gallen): The Geiger families emigrated in 1737 under the leadership of Johann Ulrich Giessendanner. They landed in Charleston in 1737, and 24 members of the extended Geiger family went straight to Saxegotha Township. Hans Jacob Geiger (born 1679) was granted 350 acres in 1742. The family grew and spread, and by 1860 (Slave Census), members of the extended Geiger family owned a total of 305 slaves.
• Horger from Guttannen, Canton of Berne: Heinrich Horger (ca. 1671–1760) emigrated with his wife and five children to Orangeburgh SC, and received 350 acres for a plantation. In 1860, his descendant David Horger was registered as owning 83 slaves. Today, there still is a Horger Street in Orangeburgh.
• Inäbnit/Inabnet from Grindelwald, Canton of Berne: Hans Inäbnit and his wife Maria with five children emigrated to Orangeburgh, South Carolina, in 1735, with the father dying aboard the ship «Samuel». The family received 250 acres for a plantation, and the grandchildren Balthasar, Christian, and Peter became plantation owners, too. In 1860, the descendants of the family are recorded as owning 274 slaves. Eliza Inabinet (1815–1882), born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in 1815 to Andrew Inabinet (1783–1839) and Ann Margaret «Nancy» Whetstone (1786–1859) married Lewis O’Bryan in 1853 and had 7 children. She passed away in 1882 in Walterboro, Colleton, South Carolina, USA. Colonel Lewis O’Bryan (1808–1860) owned the rice plantation Round O. He was State Representative, State Senator, and Delegate to the pro-slavery «Southern Rights Convention» in 1852. In 1860, he owned 123 slaves at Round O plantation, St. Bartholomew’s Parish, Colleton Dictrict, S.C.
• Gindrat/Gindra/Jindra/Jinright from Tramelan (Canton of Berne): Abraham Gindrat (1713–1767) emigrated to South Carolina. Among his descendants were his son Daniel Henry Gindrat, (1740–1801) and his grandson Abraham Gindrat (1764–1815), born in Purysburg. Later members of the family moved to Georgia. Others (Gindrat, Jinright) are recorded in the 1860 Slave Census in Kentucky, Alabama and Texas, owning 26 slaves.
• Keller from Arisdorf, Canton of Basel-Landschaft: Martin Keller received land for a plantation in Orangeburgh SC in 1737. In 1860, the descendants of the family were recorded as owning 159 slaves.
• Koller/Culler from the Canton of Berne: Being a bachelor, Benedict Koller only received 50 acres in Orangeburgh in 1735. His descendant Jacob Culler (1780 – 1858) owned 7000 acres cotton, indigo and rice plantation which was destroyed in the Civil War. Culler descendants are registered in the 1860 Slace Census with 70 slaves.
• Künzler/Kuntzler/Kinsler from the Canton of St.Gallen): Hans Conrad Kuntzler (christened in St. Margrethen in 1709) was allotted land in the new township Congaree. John Herman Kinsler (1823-1902) owned a plantation and moved his family and 14 slaves to Florida before the Civil War. In the 1860 Slave Census, members of the Kinsler family are recorded as owning 123 slaves.
• Müller/Miller from Bâle: In 1735, the family of Jacob and Catharina Elisabeth Müller were alllocated 100 acres for a plantation in Orangeburgh SC.
• Murer/Moorer from the Simmental in the Canton of Berne: Peter Murer (b. 1684) and his family emigrated via Charleston to Orangeburgh, where they were allocated 150 acres for a plantation. In 1860, the descendants of the family were recorded as owning 209 slaves.
• Jasper Nagel/Nail received a land grant of 400 acres in 1738 along with his fellow Swiss. He was the father of three sons, Daniel, Hans Conrad, and Casper, as well as two daughters, whose names are unknown. Daniel Nail, the eldest, inherited his father’s estate and ran a very large-scale farming and blacksmith operation in the New Windsor area. He died in 1772 when his children were young, and left a sizeable estate to his wife, which included 750 acres, 22 slaves, 100 pigs, 62 sheep, 3,150 bushels of Indian corn, 50 pounds of wool, and more. Casper Nail lived the longest and was also a successful planter.
• Ott from Guttannen, Canton of Berne: The ship on which Melchior Ott with his family were travelling was captured by the Spanish and they were taken to Havan (Cuba). After two years in prison, they arrived in Orangeburgh in 1746, penniless. In 1751 they were allocated 350 acres for a plantation. In 1860, the descendants of the family were recorded as owning 89 slaves.
• Pfeiffer/Phifer from Häfelfingen, Canton of Basel Landschaft: Martin Pfeiffer (1720-1791) emigrated to Philadelphia via Rotterdam in 1736. In the 1750s, Martin Phifer moved to North Carolina, where he moved up in the local militia to the rank of Major and became a member of the the state legislature. He owed his wealth to his three plantations near Concorde and to his grain mill. He left his plantations to his three sons: Red Hill to John (1747–78), an unknown plantation to Caleb (1749–1811) and Cold Water to Martin Jr. (1756–1837). His will mentions 18 slaves, who were left to his wife, to his grandchildren Magret and Paul and to his children. In 1850, the descendants of the family in the Concord area were recorded as owning 94 slaves.
• Rebsamen/Rebsome/Turnipseed from Turbenthal, Canton of Zurich: Hans and Beat Rebsamen migrated to South Caroline. In 1751, Hans Rebsome applied for 50 acres for a plantation in the Saxe-Gotha township area. In 1860, the descendants of the family were recorded as owning 132 slaves.
• Rickenbacher(Rickenbacker/Rickenbaker from Runenberg (Canton of Basellandschaft): Heinrich Rickenbacher (1690–1739) with his wife Anna Bürgi arrived in Orangeburgh in 1735. They were granted 350 acres, which on his death went to son Heini. One Samuel Rickenbacker (1760–after 1820) appears in the 1820 census as owning 26 slaves. In the 1860 Slave Census, members of the Rickenbacker family are recorded with a total of 19 slaves.
• Rumpf/Rumph from the Canton of Berne (possibly from Frutigen): The siblings David, Jacob, Abraham, Peter, and Catherine Rumph received 350 acres of land for as plantation in Orangeburgh SC. Jacob Rumph (1752–1812) became a captain in the American militia fighting the British. Later he was promoted to Brigadier General and became a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives. He lived on Pine Grove Plantation, South Carolina. His son Lewis Rumph (1793–1862) owned a 5000 acre plantation in the Orangeburgh area and was married to one Rachel Amaker. In 1860, the descendants of the family were recorded as owning 117 slaves.
• Säli/Salley/ Zaley from Zeglingen, Canton of Basel-Landschaft: Heinrich Säli with his wife Maria emigrated from Sissach (BL) to Orangeburgh, where they were granted 200 acres for a plantation. Their sons Henry and Martin soon owned plantations of their own. In 1860, the descendants of the family were recorded as owning 127 slaves.
• Schuler/Shuler from Ferenbalm, Canton of Berne: The families of Hans Jörg Schuler (b. 1691) and his brother Johann Jakob Schuler (b. 1693) migrated to Orangeburgh, where they were allocated 400 acres for a plantation. In 1860, the descendants of the family were recorded as owning 408 slaves in the Orangenburgh district. In 1859, plantation Four Hole Place, St James Goose Creek Parish, Charleston, South Carolina, belonged to the family of Frederick Shuler (1794-1864), who was related to the Dantzler family, together with 117 slaves. In 1860, there were 518 Shuler slaves recorded in the Slave Census.
• Sterchi/Sturkie/Sturkey from Interlaken (Canton of Berne): Ulrich Sterchi (baptised 1694) and other members of his family emigrated to Orangeburgh in the 1750s, where they were granted land and became plantation owners. According to the 1820 census, one William Sturkey owned 4 slaves and 5 slaves in 1840. In the 1860 Slave Census, members of the Sturkey family are registered with a total of 21 slaves.
• George Straubhaar (Stroubhart, Strobhar) from a Swiss family received 450 acres in Granville County, St. Peter’s Parish, near Purrysburg in 1765. In 1767, one J. Stroubhart was the richest person in Purrysburg: He estate was worth 13,000 £, and he owned 22 slaves.
• Strauman/Stroman from Waldenburg, Canton of Basel-Landschaft: Balthasar Straumann with his family and the unmarried Heinrich Straumann arrived in Orangeburgh via Charleston and were granted 300 + 50 acres for two plantations. One John Stromann was granted 200 acres in 1735, one Henry Stroman 250 acres in 1762. One Jacob Stroman owned the plantation Rocky Swamp with 150 slaves. In 1860, the descendants of the family were recorded as owning 265 slaves. Captain John Stroman Jennings (1808-1887) of Cedar Grove, a South Edisto River plantation in the Orangeburg District, owned a large lumber and sawmill. He fought for the Confederate troops in the rank of a captain, and he owned 182 slaves in 1860. The 1860 Slave Census records 265 slaves in the hands of members of the Stroman family.
• John Jacob (Johann Jakob) Sturzenegger was part of the Tobler group of emigrants from the Appenzell area. He received a land grant of 200 acres in New Windsor in 1737. He was probably married to Elizabeth Tobler, daughter of Johannes Tobler. Their children were Catrina and John Sturzenegger (ca. 1740–1792), who was granted 100 acres in 1765.
• Also part of the Tobler group were the Meyer brothers, Leonard, Ulric, and Michael. They applied for and received a land grant of 100 acres on the Savannah River in 1737. Although little is known about the whereabouts of Leonard and Ulric (they may have died soon after their arrival as many Swiss did), Michael’s descendants are very numerous. He successfully received three other land grants, one of which was his 390 acre plantation situated on the Savannah River.
• Jacob Waldburger (died 1770) of St. Peter’s Parish, Granville County, South Carolina, was born in Switzerland. His will was dated January 9, 1769 and probated on March 22, 1770. He had owned 21 slaves in Purrysburg. In 1767, he announced in the South Carolina Gazette that he was looking for «a middle-sized Negro fellow named George, of the Guinea country», who had «several marks of punishment on his back» and who had late been the property of Mr. Zouberbuhler. Jacob might have been a descendant of Daniel Waldburger from Teufen (Canton of Appenzell Ausserhoden), who had followed Johannes Tobler to South Carolina to establish a colony. Daniel Waldburger had been a successful businessman and had owned land and slaves.
• Wettstein/Whetstone from Illnau, Canton of Zurich: Hans Wettstein (b. 1699) with his family and that of his sister Anna, who was married to Conrad Denzler. migrated to Orangeburgh, where they were allocated 250 acres in 1738 and another 300 acres in 1749 for a plantation. In 1771, one Henry Whetstone was granted 300 acres. In 1860, Whetstone family members are recorded with a total of 17 slaves.
• Zimmermann from the Canton of Zurich (possibly from Illnau): In 1752, Martin Zimmermann landed in Charleston, South Carolina, on board the «Cunliffe». In 1773, one Mi Zimmermann was granted 300 acres in Amelia Township. John Conrad Zimmermann (1802-1987) inherited plantation Rosemount in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, from his uncle and enlarged it. In 1860, 107 slaves were registered there. He also owned «Glendale Mill», a cotton factory. Thomas Holman Zimmermann (1816-1886) inherited Oakland plantation from his father in Orangeburgh County. In 1850, 72 slaves were registered there. In 1850, Russel Zimmerman (1817-1888) owned a plantation with 60 slaves in Orangeburg County. Mary Margaret Holman Zimmermann (1820-1906) married Dr. Lewis Dantzler, a medical doctor and plantation owner. His plantation in Wells, Orangeburgh County, was registered with 89 slaves in 1860. Members of the Zimmermann family were recorded in the 1860 Slave Census as owning a total of 426 slaves.
• Züblin/Zubly/Zublin/Zubley/Sibley from St.Gallen: David Zublin Jr. (ca. 1700–1753) emigrated to South Carolina and settled near the Savannah River in 1736. His son Johann Joachim Zubly (1724– 1781) was ordained to the Reformed Church ministry in London in 1744. He then emigrated to South Carolina, too. In 1746, he married Anna Tobler, daughter of Appenzell Ausserrhoden governor and later New Windsor Township founder Johannes Tobler. In 1757 he was granted 186 acres of land. In 1760, he accepted a call to the Independent Church in Savannah, Georgia. He acquired considerable land in South Carolina and Georgia, and with enslaved workers produced rice and indigo. In 1762, one Daniel Zubley was granted 250 acres. In 1778, he noted: «Sent my tax list to Sav [Savannah]: 18 Negroes, lands including Plantations possessd by my son & son in Law (1720 Acres + 1350 acres, the Brickhouse now used as a Hospital, trust Lott & wharf contguous to Mr. Clay for Estate of J. W, Say 1250 Acres of Land, a Lott in the Village of St. Gall unimprovd & £2000 at Interest.» David Zubly III (1738 – 1790), another son of David Zublin Jr., was born in Purysburg. He was granted 250 acres in Granville County, New Windsor Township, on the waters of Savannah river in 1765. A mortgage record of 1768 shows that he used the 250 acres as well as slaves as bond. He was also a merchant. By 1774, he was a Justice of the Peace at New Windsor and by the 1780s had amassed an estate in excess of 5,000 acres. Originally studying medicine, it appears he eventually settled on life as a planter. He left behind five wealthy daughters which, although they did not carry the Zubly name, comprise one of the largest groups of Swiss descendants in the present Beech Island area. John Joachim Zubly’s son David Zubly (1748–1792) was born in Purysburg and became a soldier, public official and landowner. Being a loyalist to the British side, he was arrested in 1776. His father died in 1781 and left him one third of the huge family estate, but in 1782, the victorious Americans banished him and seized his property. David Zubly, who according to the British Record Office owned «16 black adult males, 12 black adult females, and 4 negro children», went to British East Florida, where he was registered as an auctioneer and a schoolmaster in 1783. In 1784, the family left for Nassau in the Bahamas. From there he claimed his father’s 2,500 acres in South Carolina and Georgia (including the 60 acres estate St Gall one mile outside Savannah, where rice was grown on 40 acres). But the rebels had destroyed a lot of his property and taken 11 of his slaves. In the Bahamas, he acquired a plantation, either on Cat Island or San Salvador (Watling Island). In 1785, he advertised in the «Bahama Gazette» for a fugitive, «a certain short stout black Negro Fellow named Robin», to be delivered to him, and offered his services «for the education of youth, in Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic: Also, Latin, Greek, and Geography». In 1788, his three children Helena, John Joachim, and Elizabeth were granted land adjoining the Cat Island plantation.
=> David Huguenin (1672–1735) from Le Locle (Canton of Neuchâtel) emigrated to the Carolinas in 1732 in the context of the foundation of Purrysburg. He settled in the Savannah River area and owned at least 800 acres. His son David Huguenin (1724–1796), also born in Le Locle, in 1782 bought Roseland Plantation in Jasper County (800 acres) and became a rich producer of cotton with many slaves. He also became the «founding father» of an extended family (about 1000 persons), which spread in the South. Members of the family administered the largest rice-plantation on the banks of the Coosawhatchie River. The Huguenins also owned Spring Hill plantation, between Coosawatchie and Ridgeland. Together the family owned more than 25,000 acres in present-day Jasper County. One of the descendants, Julius Gillison Huguenin (1806–1862), owned 329 slaves on a 1900 acres plantation. Another of his descendants, Cornelius M. Huguenin (1817-1856), ran Roseland Plantation with 268 Slaves in 1850. His son, General Thomas Abraham Huguenin (1839–1897), of the First South Carolina Infantry fought in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy, like many other members of his family. He was the last commander of Fort Sumter. After the war he was a Brigadier General of the South Carolina militia. Julius G. Huguenin (1806-1862) was a delegate to the South Carolina Convention for Southern Rights in 1852 und his son, Abraham Huguenin (1836-1885), was a Captain with the South Carolina Army in the Civil War. David Huguenin (1724–1796) was the grandfather of Sarah Rebecca Huguenin (1808–1829) and Emmeline Lucia Huguenin (1819–1858). They were both married to Colonel William Ferguson Colcock (1804–1889) of The Ocean plantation, Gopher Hill summer resort, and Charleston. He held the offices of State Representative, Speaker of the House, U.S. Representative (1849–1853), Collector of the Port of Charleston. In 1860, he owned 171 slaves in St. Luke’s Parish, Beaufort District. Until 1861, he served the federal administration in Washington, then the Confederate States. The wedding to Sarah Rebecca Huguenin took place on Roseland Plantation, and Sarah Rebecca was buried in the Huguenin family graveyard in Ridgeland.
=> The first of the De Saussure family from Geneva probably settled in the Beaufort District in South Carolina in the wake of the abortive Purysburg project launched by Jean-Pierre Pury (1675–1736) from Neuchâtel. One Henri de Saussure (1709–1761) from Lausanne in the Canton of Berne/Vaud immigrated to South Carolina in 1730 and died in Coosawhatchie, Jasper, South Carolina. He was the father of Daniel DeSaussure and grandfather of Henry William de Saussure. Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740–1799) was a famous geologist, meteorologist, physicist, and mountaineer from Geneva. He was married to the daughter of wealthy banker, was a merchant himself, and and partner in the Geneva bank «De Candolle, Lavit & Cie.», which traded in indiennes textiles, gave credits to shipping expeditions to Asia and cooperated with a company involved in the slave trade from Moçambique. His cousin in America was Henry William de Saussure (1763–1839), whose father Daniel DeSaussure (1736–1798) was a wealthy merchant and landowner in Beaufort and Charleston, trading in rice and indigo. Later, sea-island cotton was king. In 1777, Daniel travelled to Switzerland to meet his cousin and to have his two children registered as Swiss citizens. In the 1860 slave census, the DeSaussure family of South Carolina is recorded as owning 643 slaves.
=> Mary Elizabeth DeSaussure (1747 – 1823), daughter of Henri De Saussure (1709 – 1761) from Lausanne in the Canton of Berne / Vaud and among the first settlers of Purysburg, South Carolina, in 1772 married William Bellinger Kelsall (1740 – 1791), son of John Kelsall, owner of plantation Great Ropers near Beaufort, South Carolina. The Kelsalls had compromised themselves als British loyalists during the War of Indepence (1775–1783) and therefore had to leave South Carolina for the Bahamas. William Bellinger Kelsall with his wife Mary Elizabeth, four daughters and their slaves arrived on Exuma in 1790. In 1791 William Bellinger Kelsall died, his wife entrusted the plantation to a manager and went to live in Nassau and 1798-1802 in London. Because plantation business was running low, because Cuba was trying to attract white immigrants, and because abolitionists were more and more active on the Bahamas, Mary Elizabeth Kelsall, daughter Henrietta and son-in-law Joseph Eysing moved to Cuba, where Eysing acquired land for a 400-acre sugar plantation on the Cacuyugin River in Holguín. The Bahamas authorities had only allowed the «export» of two slaves per European, so Mary Elizabeth Kelsall used the trick of signing manumission papers for six of her slaves without informing them. They were used as slave labour for 20 more years, but then abolitionists discovered the scheme and launched a court case which continued for more than six years under the name of the «Kelsall Affair».
=> Louis Daniel DeSaussure (1804–1869, son of Henry William de Saussure) from a family originally from Geneva, was a slave-owner and probably one of the most important slave-auctioneers in the South. In 1852, he offered a «Gang of 25 Sea Island Cotton and Rice Negroes» for sale in an auction in Charleston, S.C., in 1857 «55 Prime Negroes Accustomed to the culture of Rice», and in 1860 «A Prime Gang of 158 Negroes», who were described as «accustomed to working in a rice mill».
=> In 1860, Henry William DeSaussure’s son William Ford DeSaussure (1792–1870) was among the signers of the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession. He was lawyer and a politician: member of the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1846, judge of the chancery court in 1847, and from 1852 on a Democratic US Senator. In 1860, he owned 20 slaves in Richland, South Carolina.
=> Wilmot Gibbes DeSaussure (1822–1886) was a brigadier general in the South Carolina militia and fought in the Civil War. He was a lawyer and a politician: He served five two-year terms in the South Carolina General assembly and also as South Carolina Secretary of the Treasury 1861/1862. The 1860 Slave Census registers four slaves in his ownership.
=> Louis M. DeSaussure (1804–1869) from a Swiss family originally from Geneva was a physician and planter of Beaufort County, S.C., son of Henry W. DeSaussure, longtime state chancellor. He owned a cotton plantation with 59 slaves according to the 1860 Slave Census. In the Civil War, he served as a surgeon with the 8th and 4th South Carolina Infantry regiments, C.S.A.
=> H. W. DeSaussure Jr. owned 53 slaves according to the 1860 Slave Census.
=> Louis McPherson DeSaussure (1804–1870) son of Henry William DeSaussure Sr., owned DeSaussure Plantation in Beaufort County, South Carolina and 76 slaves in 1860. He and his son Charles served as surgeons during the Civil War. DeSaussure’s property was confiscated after the war.
=> John M. DeSaussure owned 291 slaves in 1860.
=> Sarah Jones DeSaussure (1817-1893) married Alexander Hamilton Boykin (1815-1866) in 1835. He was a successful planter in the Kershaw and Sumter districts, where he possessed 5,737 acres at his death. His residential plantation, which he purchased in December 1835, was Plane Hill near Camden. Other of Boykin’s holdings included Hillyard, Carter Hill (700 acres), Millway, Pine Grove, and the Mill plantations on Swift Creek. According to the 1860 federal census, his real and personal estates were valued at $55,000 and $241,000 respectively; the slave schedules for that year listed 189 slaves in Kershaw and 58 slaves in Sumter as his property. He was a politician (South Carolina House of Representatives) and he fought in the Civil War in the rank of a captain. Confederate president Jefferson Davis appointed him judge advocate in 1862. Sarah Jones DeSaussure’s nanny Nancy was an indigenous slave.
3.1.5 Florida
=> The Mississippi Bubble was a financial scheme in France that triggered a speculative frenzy. It was engineered by John Law, Scottish adventurer and financial wizard, and monopolized the French tobacco and African slave trades. In 1719, the vessels «Grand Duc du Maine» and «Aurore» unloaded their human freight in Pensacola (Florida): 500 black slaves. In 1720, Law’s companies ended in financial collapse. Swiss money was invested by:
• the city State of Solothurn (N Switzerland)
• les Mississippiens de Steckborn, i.e. Jean-Henri Labhard, Jean and Jean-Georges Deucher, and Jean-Georges Füllemann, all from Steckborn (Canton of Thurgau, NE Switzerland)
• the merchants Conrad Zellweger-Tanner (1659-1749), Conrad Zellweger-Sulser (1694-1771) and Johannes Zellweger-Sulser (1695-1774) from Trogen (Canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden, E-Switzerland)
• Louis Guiguer (1675-1747), citizen of Bürglen (Canton of Thurgau, NE Switzerland), with an investment of 800,000 £ the fourth most important shareholder of the «Compagnie des Indes Occidentales»
• a considerable number of citizens of Geneva and citizens of St.Gallen in Lyon (among them banker Henri d’Antoine Locher)
• the banking company «Malacrida» from Berne
=> Francis Philip Fatio (1724–1811) from Vevey (Canton of Berne/Vaud) first was a soldier in the Swiss Guard, then became a merchant in London. In 1769, he invested in plantations in East Florida. In 1771, he moved with his family to East Florida and become the managing partner of New Castle Plantation, which specialized in producing indigo. In 1774, he moved to another plantation, which he first called New Switzerland, then Nueva Suiza. It had a surface of 10,000 acres and, with 86 slaves, produced maize, citrus fruit and cotton for sale. Francis Philipp Fatio became the founding father of the Florida branch of the Fatio family.
=> In 1769, one David Courvoisier, probably from Neuchâtel, bought 700 acres for Fatio’s London company and established the indigo plantation Neufchâtel. In 1771, Francis Philip Fatio became its first director.
=> (Sir) Frederick Haldimand (1718–1791) from Yverdon in the Canton of Berne / Vaud was an army officer and colonial administrator. In 1755, when full-scale war against the French was edging closer, he cooperated with members of the Swiss Prévost family from Geneva (three brothers and a nephew) and with Henry Bouquet (1719–1765) from Rolle in the Canton of Berne / Vaud in the raising of troops among German and Swiss settlers. Frederick Haldimand, who was stationed in Florida during the war, was appointed to the sinecure of inspector general of the British forces in the West Indies in 1775.
=> Henry Bouquet (1719–1765) from Rolle in the Canton of Berne/Vaud entered the British Army in 1754 as a lieutenant colonel in the 60th Regiment of Foot. Bouquet gained lasting infamy during the «French and Indian War» (1754–1763) by organising massacres among the indigenous nations and by pioneering germ warfare: He sent the besieged Delaware two blankets and a handkerchief that had been exposed to smallpox, in an attempt to spread the disease among the Natives. In 1763, groups of Native Americans joined forces to remove the British from their territory in what is most often called «Pontiac’s War». Chief Pontiac (actually Obwandiyag, born between 1712 und 1720, died 1769) attacked frontier forts and settlements in 1763, and numerous frontier outposts were quickly overrun, others were besieged or threatened. Bouquet, who was in Philadelphia, threw together a hastily organised force of 500 men. He and his relief column were attacked by warriors from various Indian nations near outpost «Bushy Run». In a two-day battle, Bouquet defeated the tribes and Fort Pitt was relieved. The battle marked a turning point in the war. It has been called «the most decisive victory in all history gained by the white man over the American Indian». It ended the Indian uprising and enabled the westward expansion of British settlements. In 1765, Bouquet was promoted to brigadier general and placed in command of all British forces in the southern colonies. He died in Pensacola, West Florida, in 1765. He had intended to spend his old age as a plantation owner. He already owned plantations in South Carolina and Maryland.
3.1.6 Georgia
=> Henry Bourquin (1755-1819) from a Swiss immigrant family possibly from Sonceboz (Berne), son of Benedict Bourquin (died 1770) and Jane Judith Chatelain Bourquin, was born in the colony of Georgia. The family lived near the Little Ogeechee on a 500 acre plantation named Bern. This adjoined the home place of his uncle, Henry Francois Bourquin, called at that time Bordeaux. In 1755, he asked for another 500 acres of land, having «a wife & four children & 25 negroes». He also asked for a lot of land in Hardwicks, and he was granted both. It is likely he continued to live on Bern with his widowed mother for some years before she died in 1799. In 1787, he owned 9 slaves. In 1769, Henry Bourquin, his nephew, asked for 500 acres for his family and 20 slaves, and was granted the land in St. Philipp’s Parish. The same year, he asked for another 500 acres of land for 20 slaves, which was granted in St. David’s Parish. In 1756, Benedict Bourquin petitioned for 450 acres of land for his family and 17 slaves, and was granted the land between Great Ogeechee and Midway. The Slave Census of 1860 records one Martha Bourquin of Savannah City District, Chatham with 3 slaves, one Benedict Bourguin of Savannah City District, Chatham with 17 slaves, and one Benedict Bourgoine of Ogeechee, Chatham, with 5 slaves.
=> Hans Felder’s son Samuel Felder (1796–1890), from a Swiss family from the Canton of St.Gallen, continued migration into Perry GA. In 1860, his family was registered there with 215 slaves. His son Calvin W. Felder was a captain in the Civil War. He lived in Americus GA, where he has street named after him, and was a slaveholder. Another Samuel Felder (1796–1867) was born in Orangeburgh and then moved to Georgia. In In 1860 he was living in Houston County with a combined real and personal estate valued at $107,152. He was the owner of twenty slaves.
=> Lewis Rumph (1793–1862) sold his plantation to one John M. Felder and moved to Georgia. In 1860, the descendants of the Rumph family were recorded as owning 186 slaves.
=> Schläppi/Slappy/Slappey from Meiringen, Canton of Berne: In 1860 they are registered among the large slaveholders. In 1860, the descendants of the Slappey family were recorded as owning 174 slaves.
=> Edward David Huguenin (1806–1863) from a Swiss family originally from Le Locle (Canton of Neuchâtel) is registered with 185 slaves in Sumter, Georgia, in the 1860 Slave Census. He fought in the Civil War in the rank of a Lieutenant Colonel. The family held the Huguenin plantation in Early County 1836-1862. The Huguenin plantation near Americus, Sumter County, Georgia, was perhaps the largest farm in Georgia (11,000 acres).
=> Abraham Gindrat (1764–1815) from a Swiss family originally from Tramelan (Berne) married Barbara Clark, widow of William Clark, and thus became the owner of White Hall Plantation in Georgia with 57 slaves. Louise Gindrat married Richard James Arnold (1796-1873) from Rhode Island, who invested heavily in White Hall for the cultivation of cotton and in his Cherry Hilland Mulberry tracts further up the Ogeechee River. He became the most prosperous rice planter in the region. By 1860 Arnold was the largest landowner in Bryan County, with over 15,000 acres and 195 slaves.
=> Robert Flournoy (1763-1825), originally from a family of Geneva Huguenots, was born into affluence in Virginia. After moving to Georgia, he amassed large land holdings in 11 counties. He then moved to Chatham County late in his life and acquired three plantations: Bona Bella Plantation (390 acres, cotton, complete with slaves), Chatham Plantation(738 acres, price 4,000 $), and Cedar Grove Plantation (1325 acres complete with house, slaves, and equipment, price 20,000$). To his daughter Mary Mildred Flournoy he gave a 575-acre-plantation with 17 slaves before her marriage in 1821.
=> According to the 1860 US Slave Census, descendants of the Swiss Turnipseed family are registered with 326 slaves in Georgia.
3.1.7 Kentucky
=> Gindrat/Gindra/Jindra/Jinrightfrom Tramelan (Canton of Berne): Abraham Gindrat (1713–1767) emigrated to South Carolina. Among his descendants were his son Daniel Henry Gindrat, (1740–1801) and his grandson Abraham Gindrat (1764–1815), born in Purysburg. Later members of the family moved to Georgia. Others (Gindrat, Jinright) are recorded in the 1860 Slave Census in Kentucky, Alabama and Texas, owning 26 slaves.
=> In the 1730s, the Huguenots began using slaves to mine coal in «Midlothian» west of Richmond, Virginia. It is assumed that via White slave-owners named Flournoy (originally from a Geneva family), whose various family members moved westward into western Virginia and Kentucky, a considerable number of Black or coloured Flournoys came into being. Jacob Flournoy’s son Francis Flournoy (1686-1773) owned large estates in the Virginia counties of Henrico and Chesterfield. Land office records show that 1723–1751 he acquired 4,821 acres. His total holdings may have been much greater. Mathews Flournoy, son of immigrant Jean-Jacques Flournoy, established Fort Flournoy in Scott County, Kentucky. The 1850 US Slave Census registers 126 slaves in the hands of Flournoy family members in Virginia, Missouri, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, and Kentucky; the 1860 US Slave Census registers 62 slaves in the hand of Flournoy family members in Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, and Kentucky.
3.1.8 Louisiana
=> The 4th company of the Swiss Regiment Karrer was stationed in Louisiana at the service of the French 1731–1764.
=> De Morsier, officer («lieutenant») in the Swiss Regiment de Karrer, had been stationed in Louisiana for 11 years and had established for himself a property («habitation») called «Hermitage», situated across Mobile Bay on the Fish River. In 1745, he applied for permission to introduce there the production of Gruyère Cheese. He wanted to send for two men and a woman competent in cheese-making from Switzerland, and he wanted guaranteed property rights for that estate.
=> Paulina deGraffenried Pickett (1816–1899) from a family originally from Berne was already one of the richest women in Louisiana, when she married John Belton Pickett, who was the richest man in the state and one of the biggest landowners. They merged their properties. Soon they divorced and Pickett moved to Cuba to become a sugar plantation owner in Cuba, and Paulina married again. In 1859/60, she bought 45 slaves with a value of 35,000 $ from her relative Thomas deGraffenreid (1815–1874) of Chester Disctrict, South Carolina.
=> William Lafayette Degraffenried (1830–1884) from a family originally from Berne was born in Lunenburg County, Virginia. He moved to Alabama and thence to Louisiana, where he became a slave-owner on his plantation Lafita on the Ouachita River in Caldwell Parish, Louisiana.
=> John Bartow Prevost (1766–1825), whose father (Col.) Jacques Marcus Prevost emigrated from Geneva with his brother (General) Augustine Prevost, became a lawyer and a slave-owner when he lived in New York. In 1804 he was appointed by President Thomas Jefferson as one of the first three judges of the Superior Court of the Territory of Orleans. Prevost bought a plantation with 35 slaves and with large sugar works near New Orlean. According to the 1860. Slave Census, many members of the Prevost family appear to have become slaveholders.
=> Alfred Flournoy (1796-1873), originally from a family of Geneva Huguenots, was a medical doctor and a cotton planter of Pulaski, Tennessee, and after 1838, a cotton planter of Greenwood Plantation in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, and leader in the Democratic Party. In 1824 he related to his wife the difficulties in selling his slaves. In 1838, a court document mentions that Alfred Flournoy had «received and had the entire control and management of the lands, slaves, monies, & other effects» belonging to the children with William C. Flournoy, who had recently died. The 1860 US slave Census registers 6 slaves in his possession.
=> Friedrich Arnold Schumacher (1840–1905) was from Berne, where he attended school and studied pharmaceutics. He emigrated to New Orleans in 1859 and worked in his brother’s commercial business. He joined the Confederate Army as an artillerist, became a colonel, and chief of armament of the artillery. In 1864, he returned to Switzerland, did military service and was promoted to lieutenant in 1865, to captain in 1869, and to instruction officer of the artillery in Berne in the same year. He was sent on a military mission to Denmark and Sweden in 1871 and was promoted to major in 1873. He was sharpshooter officer of the Armory in Thun, Canton Bern, from 1878 to 1879 and promoted to colonel in 1884. From 1889 to 1894, he was senior instructor of the artillery, and from 1894–1899 chief of armament of the artillery and chief of the artillery. He founded the boys› corps «Flibustia» to awaken interest in the military.
3.1.9 Mississippi
=> Frederick Zollicoffer (1806–1874) Dr., son of John Jacob Zollikofer, a Swiss Baron from a family originally from St.Gallen/Thurgau, born in Maury County, Tenessee, moved to Mississippi, where he became an extensive planter and slave holder. He introduced mule-raising to this section of McVille, Attala County, Mississippi. He died at Kosciusko, Attala County, Mississippi. In 1850, he owned 15 slaves (6 males, 9 females).
=> According to the 1860 US Slave Census, descendants of the Swiss Dantzler family are registered with 648 slaves in Mississippi.
=> In 1720, Charles Frédéric Merveilleux (Wunderlich) from a Neuchâtel/Berne family tried to attract recruits for service in (the island of) Mississippi in the context of John Law’s speculation project. He seems to have succeeded in getting several families of poor people, but his scheme was opposed by Berne and other governments. Later, he was a captain in the Swiss Regiment de Karrer, garrisoned on Ile Royale. He became the founding father of the French branch of the family. He died in 1749.
=> David Joseph Garde from Berne was a soldier in the French troops in Louisiana under the command of Swiss captain Merveilleux. He married Catherine Leib in New Orleans in 1724.
=> Jean-Daniel Koly (or Kolly) from Switzerland, former financial adviser to a Bavarian prince-elector, on behalf of John Law (of the French «Compagnie d’Occident») and others established and administered the settlement Sainte-Catherine in Natchez (today Mississippi, then the French colony of Louisiana). Sainte-Catherine disappeared during the great Natchez Uprising of 1729 against French colonial rule.
3.1.10 New York
=> Jean-Jacques Cart (1748-1813) from Morges, Canton of Berne/Vaud worked in Boston 1769-73 as private teacher of Admiral Hood’s son. He lived in Britain from 1776–1768, where he probably completed his legal studies. He was sent to America in 1793 at the service of the French Ministry of the Navy. After a stay of two years in New York, he settled in 1795 in Rosendale in the Hudson Valley, where, with the help of some Swiss and a large enslaved labour force, he worked a large farm. In 1798, however, he returned home because the French had conquered Switzerland.
3.1.11. Tennessee
=> A distant relative of Anton, Thomas and Sarah DeGraffenreid (see Carolinas) was Baker Boswell DeGraffenreid (1785-1855) from a family originally from Berne, one of the richest men in Fayette County, Tennessee. 74 slaves were registered on his plantation in 1850. Before he had started giving away slaves to his children in the 1840s, the number had been over 100. In the same district, one Henry Degrafinreid owned 23 slaves in 1860. In Franklin, Williamson County, Tennessee, one Mathew Fountaine DeGraffinreid (1779-1869) owned 44 slaves.
=> Elisabeth Zollicoffer (1812–1854), wife of Dr. Frederick Zollicoffer, from a Swiss family originally from St.Gallen/Thurgau, owned 18 slaves in Maury County, Tennessee, according to the 1850 Slave Census.
=> One Frank L. Theus, probably from a family of Swiss emigrants from Chur, canton of the Grisons, owned 41 slaves in Madison, Tennessee, according to the 1860 census.
3.1.12 Texas
=> Johann Conrad (J.C.) Kuhn (1808–????) was born in eastern Switzerland in the village of Thal (Canton of St.Gallen). He studied to be a medical doctor, and in 1833 emigrated to Galveston in Texas. In 1846, after the annexation of Texas, the state chamber of the Swiss Parliament decided to create in Galveston a seventh consulate in the USA and nominated J.C. Kuhn, who had meanwhile become a cotton trader, for the office. In 1859, Kuhn commissioned S.Gildersleeve & Sons to build a 50 meter three-master in Portland. In 1860, the merchant vessel «J.C. Kuhn» sailed to Liverpool with a first cotton cargo, flying the Swiss flag, the Texas flag, and the Stars and Stripes. In August 1861, the US Marine took over the ship and used it in the Civil War, which had broken out in April. J.C. Kuhn, who according to the 1860 slave census had become the owner of 41 slaves, continued his commercial activities. Although the port of Galveston (like all Southern ports) was blockaded by the US Marine, Kuhn fitted out several ships and, with their cargoes of cotton bales, let them run the blockade under the Swiss flag. On 22nd August 1863, Kuhn’s schooner Wave, flying the Swiss flag and carrying a cargo of 80 bales of cotton (weighing 41,068 pounds), ran the blockade at San Luis Pass near Galveston, was captured by the US Marine and was subsequently sent to New Orleans for adjudication. Another of Kuhn’s ships was captured for running the blockade in late August 1863, this time with a cargo of 133 bales. The case of J.C. Kuhn being a slave-holding Swiss consul is parallel to similar cases in the 1860s in Brazil (see the debate on Swiss slave holders in Brazil in the Swiss Parliament in 1863/1864 brought about by Schaffhausen’s federal MP Wilhelm Joos).
=> In 1845 or 1846, after the death of her husband Samuel Bookman, Sr., Jemima (Junema) Bookman along with three of her sons Daniel E. Bookman, Joseph C. Bookman and Jesse Bookman migrated from South Carolina to Texas. The 1860 Slave Census registered a total of 21 slaves owned by members of the family.
=> Heinrich Rosenberger (1824–1893) from Bilten in the Canton of Glarus emigrated to Galveston. He followed Johann Hösli (Hessly), son of Heinrich Hössli, hatmaker, philosopher, and pioneer for the rights to homosexual love, and established himself as Henry Rosenberg, financier and investor active in banking, real estate, and transportation. Around 1859, he had a slavehouse built near his fashionable brick Italianate residence, and according to the 1860 US Slave Register, he still owned two slaves: an 18-year-old mulatto male and a 14-year-old black female. In 1866, he was appointed vice consul of Switzerland for Texas, and became Swiss consul three years later. He held that position until his death. When he died, he was considered the richest inhabitant of the state. In his last will, he took his home town into account and financed the renovation of the village church and a number of social institutions. A memorial foundation in the Canton of Glarus (Heinrich Rosenberger Stiftung), a library and a monument in Galveston as well as the city of Rosenberg commemorate his name. In 1895, two years after Rosenberg’s death, his widowed wife Mollie Ragan Macgill Rosenberg (1839–1917) from a family devoted to the Confederacy used her wealth to establish the Galveston Veuve Jefferson Davis chapter of the «United Daughters of the Confederacy», whose president she remained until her death. That organisation has been accused by many of «advocacy for white supremacy». In 1911, during the height of the Jim Crow era with its new legislation against free Blacks, its violence, and its voter intimidation, the statue «Dignified Resignation» was erected at Mollie Rosenberg’s behest, who thus expressed her devotion to the «Lost Cause» of the slaveholding South. From the «Galveston Monument Project» website: «In light of current public discourse over race, racism, black history, and the growing awareness of the presence of confederate statues within our landscapes, the Rosenberg family name is at stake, as is the reputation and perception of Galveston itself.»
=> Nancy Lindsey Zollicoffer (1821–1918), daughter of George Zollicoffer from Tenessee and from a Swiss family originally from St.Gallen/Thurgau in 1836 married the planter Robert H. Cumby (1825–1881), who had moved with his family from Virginia to Lafayette County, Mississippi. They resided there until 1849, when they moved to Rusk County, Texas. Cumby became a prominent planter, a politician and one of the wealthiest men in the county. In 1860 he owned $22,600 in land and $38,000 in personal property, including thirty slaves. He fought in the Civil War as a Captain with the Texas Cavalry.
=> Samuel Martin Flournoy (1799–1878), originally from a family of Geneva Huguenots, was an early settler in the Republic of Texas, one of twin sons of Nancy Ann Martin and Samuel Flournoy (1758-1818), grandson of Jean-Jacques Flournoy. He was born in Scott County, Kentucky, and as young men, the brothers, Samuel and John, travelled by flatboat to New Orleans. When John died unexpectedly on the return trip, Samuel chose not to return to Kentucky. He travelled instead to Madison County, Mississippi, and settled near Canton. Flournoy prospered and in 1836 sent an overseer with 100 slaves to build a home in Chireno, Nacogdoches County. When he received word that the party had mistakenly gone to Sabine County to the South, he travelled to Texas and personally guided them to Chireno. On his arrival he bought additional lands in what are now Smith, Rains, and Wood counties. He completed his home by 1841 and returned to Mississippi for his family. By the summer of 1850 he had selected a new homesite a mile southeast of Quitman in Wood County. He sent his oldest son, Warner Mitchell Flournoy (1830–1916), to supervise a large group of slaves in the home’s construction, which the family occupied by late 1851. From the beginning Flournoy was active in public affairs. In 1852, as commissioner of the Second Precinct in Wood County, he used slave labour to build a road from Quitman to the Upshur county line. He was 61 when Texas joined the Confederacy in March 1861. The Texas governor commissioned him brigadier general and commander of the Texas Militia, Twelfth Brigade. Flournoy provided land for Camp Flournoy from his property holdings just southeast of his home. In October 1861 he enlisted at Camp Flournoy in the Third Texas Confederate Cavalry. He served with this unit for one year as a teamster, with his own team and wagon. Flournoy retired from public service after the war.
=> Gabriel Felder (1797–1868) from a family from the Canton of St.Gallen was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and became a judge. He moved first to Mississippi, where he married. In 1851, he moved to Texas with his wife, Ann, and two sons. He settled in Washington County and 1852–1856 purchased several tracts of land totaling 2,418 acres on the banks of New Year Creek, at a cost of more than $19,000, to be paid as he received money from his property in South Carolina. He had inherited a fourth of the estate of his brother, John M. Felder, of Orangeburg, South Carolina, amounting to $100,000, which included $48,830 in «Negro property,» or 95 slaves, and $51,000 in money, mules, and horses.
3.1.13 Virginia
=> Christopher DeGraffenreid Jr (1691-1742) from a family originally from Berne owned a town house in Williamsburg, Virginia, and a plantation on the the nearby St. James River. His only son and heir was Anton/Anthony Tscharner DeGraffenreid (1722-1794), who lived in Lunenburg, Virginia. Close by was the plantation owned by a brother of Tscharner Hobson DeGraffenreid, Thomas D. DeGraffenreid (1815-1874). It was called The Baron’s Estate and was even bigger than his brother’s. In the Census of 1840, Thomas deGraffenreid with 109 slaves was, next to Colonel F. W.Davie with 108, Chester’s largest planter. In 1860, 155 slaves were registered there. The plantation was owned earlier on by (1764–1821).
=> The Schlatter family from St.Gallen counted among their members numerous councillors and two deputy mayors. Some became merchants, traders in colonial goods, theologians, and textile manufacturers, and the family globalised in the direction of Italy, Germany, the Dutch West and East Indies, Russia, and British North America. Michael Schlatter (1716–1790) was born in St.Gallen and studied theology in Leyden and Brunswick. He was ordained in 1739, and in 1746 offered his services as a missionary to the German Reformed emigrants in Philadelphia. He served as pastor of the united churches of Germantown and Philadelphia in 1746–1751, and made extended missionary tours among the German Reformed settlers in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and New York State. In 1757, Schlatter accepted an offer to become chaplain of the Royal American regiment, which he accompanied on an expedition to Louisbourg. He remained with the army until 1759. In 1764 he was a chaplain to the 2nd Pennsylvania Battalion under Henry Bouquet (1719–1765) from Rolle in the Canton of Berne / Vaud on a campaign against the Ohio Indians. In 1777, while still attached to the royal army, he refused to obey orders on account of sympathy with the colonial cause. He was imprisoned, and his house was plundered.
=> Jean Antoine and Antoine Charles Cazenove (1775–1852) from an aristocratic Geneva family of Huguenots had settled in France and left that country after the Revolution. Antoine Charles had worked in London in 1790, in the counting house of James Cazenove & Co. He had also once had a commission in the Swiss body-guard of Louis XVI. In 1794, the two brothers Cazenove fled the upheavals of the French Revolution and – via Switzerland and Hamburg – arrived in the United States, where Jean-Louis Badollet and Albert Gallatin (both from Geneva, too) together with Jean Antoine Cazonove founded New Geneva in Pennsylvania. Gallatin was later to become the longest-serving US Secretary of the Treasury. In 1799, Antoine Charles (Anthony-Charles) Cazenove took up his residence in Alexandria, Virginia, where he passed a long life as a highly respected commission merchant and a banker (director of the Bank of Alexandria) who traded with textiles, sugar and iron from Calcutta among others. Originally planning to return to Geneva, Anthony-Charles Cazenove arranged for all of his children to have citizenship of the city. In 1830, he had his house on North Washington Street built in Greek Revival Style. His descendants are numerous and widely scattered from Massachusetts to Georgia. In 1854, one William G. Cazenove is mentioned in the case of the manumission of 41-year-old mulatto slave Sandy (worth $500) as executor of Anthony Charles Cazenove. In the 1860 US Slave Census, one Wm Cazenove is mentioned as owning six slaves (three male, three female) in Alexandria, Virginia. This was probably Anthony-Charles Cazenove’s youngest son William Gardner Cazenove (1819-1877). Another son was Louis Anthony Cazenove (1807–1852), a successful Alexandria merchant, who bought the Lee family home in 1850 for his new bride, Harriotte Stuart. The young couple were joined at the house by Louis‹ daughters from his first marriage and his father Anthony Charles Cazenove. When both Louis Anthony and his father Anthony Charles died in 1852, Harriotte and her daughters moved to a new house. In the Civil War, Harriot Stuart took sides with the South and in 1863 refused to swear an oath of loyalty to the Federal Government.
=> Today’s wealth-manager «Cazenove Capital» prides itself of its roots reaching back to 1823, when «Philipp Cazenove (1798–1880) and his brother-in-law John Menet became partners. Wikipedia argues that the company had its roots in the early Huguenot financiers who left France for Geneva in 1685 after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Among those were members of the Cazenove family, who later left Geneva for the UK seeking wealth and freedom in the City of London.
=> Jacob Flournoy (1663–1725 ) from a Geneva family of Huguenots, who had fled from France on account of religious persecution, immigrated to Virginia via Holland in 1700, on the ship Ship «Peter and Anthony», with his wife and four children, among them Francis. He was the uncle of Jean Jacques Flournoy (1686–1740), who came over from Britain around 1720. At that time, apparently over two hundred Huguenots settled at a spot some twenty miles above Richmond on the south side of James River, where ten thousand acres of land, which had been occupied by the displaced Manakin Tribe of Indians, were allotted to them and called Manakintown. Several documents list land grants to members of the Flournoy family: 400 acres to John James Flournoy (1723), 3200 acres to John James Flournoy and slave-holder Daniel Stoner (1738), who probably descended from a Swiss Anabaptist family «Steiner» from the Canton of Berne. Land was also granted to Jacob, Elizabeth, Frances, Henry W., Jane, Sallie, Stanhope, Thomas, Thomas Stanhope, and William Flournoy. In the 1730s, the Huguenots began using slaves to mine coal in «Midlothian» west of Richmond, Virginia. It is assumed that via White slave-owners named Flournoy, whose various family members moved westward into western Virginia and Kentucky, a considerable number of Black or coloured Flournoys came into being. Jacob Flournoy’s son Francis Flournoy (1686-1773) owned large estates in the Virginia counties of Henrico and Chesterfield. Land office records show that 1723–1751 he acquired 4,821 acres. His total holdings may have been much greater. Mathews Flournoy, son of immigrant Jean-Jacques Flournoy, established Fort Flournoy in Scott County, Kentucky. The 1850 US Slave Census registers 126 slaves in the hands of Flournoy family members in Virginia, Missouri, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, and Kentucky; the 1860 US Slave Census registers 62 slaves in the hand of Flournoy family members in Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, and Kentucky.
=> Jacob Flournoy (1760-1846), originally from a family of Geneva Huguenots, lived in Chesterfield County, Virginia, all of his life. Family tradition refers to him as «Great Jacob«, a man of above-average physical strength. He was a plantation and slave owner and is said to have raised fine horses. In his will of 1843, he left to his granddaughter, Virginia Ann Cheatham, «one negro girl, Emmelin and future increase, during said Virginia Ann’s life and then to the said Virginia Ann’s heirs forever», and to his grandchildren «the following negroes […]: Rose Anderson, Archer, Ester, Robert, Nathan Jordon, and Sam, with their increase up to this time and for the future, to them and their heirs forever.» Mark Farmer Flournoy (1792–1854), son of Jacob Flournoy was the holder in Chesterfield, Virginia, of at least 21 slaves as of 1850.
=> Thomas Stanhope Flournoy (1811–1883), originally from a family of Geneva Huguenots, was a U.S. Representative from Virginia and a cavalry officer in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He served as member of the secession convention in 1861 at Richmond. He then entered the Confederate States Army, raised a company of cavalry, and initially served as its captain. He was promoted to colonel of the 6th Virginia Cavalry. He participated in Stonewall Jackson’s 1862 Valley Campaign and saw action at the battles of Port Republic and Cross Keys. He was again an unsuccessful candidate for governor in 1863. The 1860 US Slave Census registers 38 slaves in his possession.
=> John Daniel Imboden (1823–1895), whose great-great-grandfather Diel Daniel Imboden came from Henau in the Canton of St.Gallen or from Hanau in Hessen (Germany) and whose great-great grandmother Elisabeth Zwygart (born 1705) from Berne, commanded the Sixty-second Virginia Mounted Infantry Regiment. At the start of 1863 he became a brigadier general, and his brigade covered the Confederate retreat after the battle of Gettysburg. Imboden greatly estimated Robert E. Lee. In the winter of 1865 he visited the prisoner-of-war camp at Andersonville, Georgia, and praised the efforts of Captain Henry Wirz for helping the captives. He later came to Washington, DC, to give evidence in support of Wirz, but he was not allowed to testify. According to the Federal Census, Imboden owned four slaves in 1850, seven in 1860. He was promoted to brigadier in 1863.
=> Henry Wirz (1823–1865) from the City of Zurich was banished for criminal activities, and emigrated to Massachusetts in 1849. After many different occupations (weaver, translator, spa supervisor, medical assistant, homeopathic healer), he became a plantation overseer in Louisiana in 1855. He became an American citizen in 1857 and volunteered for the Confederate Army in Virginia. He worked his way up in the military adminstration (secretary to various commanders, promoted to captain and assistant adjutant general, in charge of various prison camps) and in 1864 was appointed commander of the infamous confederate prison Camp Sumter near Andersonville. His brutal regime was inspired by his experience as a slave-plantation overseer: Plantation hounds and iron shackles were used to capture and punish escaped prisoners. After the war, he was accused of conspiracy and murder in 13 cases, condemned to death and executed by hanging in Washington in 1865. The «United Daughters of the Confederacy» later initiated the construction of a monument honouring Henry Wirz in Andersonville, Georgia. Every year the the UDC and the SCV (Sons of Coinfederate Veterans) hold a memorial service at there, until today. About 130 people attended in November 2020.
3.2 Canada
=> In 1745, Jean Baptiste du Croix from Sion in the diocese of Geneva (today Canton of Valais) was serving the Swiss Regiment de Karrer in Louisbourg on the Island of Cap-Breton (today Nova Scotia, Canada). On behalf of and by order of the regiment’s commander and owner Louis Ignaz Karrer (1711–1751) from Solothurn, he was transferred to the Royal Prison in Rochefort to be interrogated. He was accused of having held an illicit and forbidden meeting with other soldiers in order to protest against poor provisioning and to demand the vegetables overdue to them by 10 days. The War Council found him guilty, and he was sentenced to be degraded, disarmed and hanged until strangulation. His body was to be left attached to the gallows until sundown for deterrence.
3.3 Brazil
(Colonial Brazil, United Kingdom with Portugal, independent empire)
=> Beat Ludwig von Mülinen (1612-1674) from a patrician family from Berne learnt the military trade – like many others – during the Thirty Years› War. In 1629, he is said to have become an officer in the army of the Swedish King Gustav Adolf and later entered the service of Holland. In 1635, in the rank of captain, he travelled to South America and took part in the campaign of the States General of the Netherlands against the Portuguese Kingdom of Brazil, which was fought for control of the South Atlantic trade. In 1638, he was injured during the siege of San Salvador. He was close to Prince and Governor General Moritz von Nassau and stayed in both Pernambuco and Curaçao. In 1642, he commanded the transport of Portuguese soldiers who had been taken prisoners. In the spring of 1642, he was granted leave and returned to Bern. There, after his marriage to Magdalena Tscharner in 1643, he joined the Grand Council and in 1653 took on important military duties against the rebels from the Emmental and Entlebuch regions during the Peasants› War. In 1654 he was given the bailiwick of Landshut and later became a member of the Bernese War Council.
=> Nigerian historian Joseph E. Inikori has called Brazil, as far as demographics and production for export are concerned, «an African country until 1872». The following Swiss textile trading houses were active in Brazil in that slavery-relevant period: «Lutz, Honegger & Cia.» and «Lutz & Cia. » (Berne), «Vollenweider & Cia. », «Rosemund, Vollenweider & Cia.», and «Rosemund & Cia.» (Basel), «Billwiller, Gsell & Cia.», «Laquai, David & Cia. », and «David, Huber & Cia.» (St.Gallen), «Daeniker, Wegmann & Cia.», «Daeniker, Ferber & Cia.», «Daeniker & Cia.», «Vogel & Cia.», and «Barth & Cia.» (Zurich). According to Swiss historian Beatrice Ziegler, almost all of these merchants owned plantations, either as an investment or to gain prestige with the local Brazilian aristocracy.
=> Swiss (and German) migration to Brazil in the fist half of the 19th century can and must also be seen in the light of early attempts by the White (originally Portuguese) Brazilian élite to «whiten up» the population of the country and thereby to reduce the alleged negative consequences of «slave imports». By 1850, there were the following Brazilian colonies populated with White Swiss and German (the one being often difficult to distinguish from the other) immigrants: Nova Friburgo, Petropolis, Cantagalo, and Valão dos Veatos in the province of Rio de Janeiro; S. Leopoldo, Torres, and Três Forquilhas (for Protestant immigrants) in Rio grande do sul; São Pedro de Alcântara and S. Isabel in Santa Catarina; Rio grande in Paranà; S. Isabel in Espirito Santo; and Senator Vergueiro’s Ybicaba parceria colonies in the province of São Paulo. Many of those Swiss and German immigrants became slave-holders in the end, although part of the strategy of the Brazilian élite had been to replace slaves by white European immigrants.
=> In her research, Brazilian historian and singer Renata A. L. Lira, has unearthed a history of struggle and conflict between the Swiss settlers of the Nova Friburgo colony and the «Quilombo» in the region of Casimiro de Abreu, district of Macaé, state of Rio de Janeiro. That conflict dates back to the early 19th century and the days of slavery (in which the Swiss settlers participated) and continues to the era of the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964–1985), when apparently the last descendants of the maroon slaves were displaced by descendants of the Swiss colonists.
=> Gabriel von May (1791–1870) from Berne (later aka «the Brazilian») served as an officer for the British and the Dutch. He arrived in Brazil in 1819, where he acquired large coffee and tobacco plantations in the Illhéus area south of Salvador de Bahia. He owned the coffee plantation Victoria, which he bought from an Englishman in 1823. He became a business partner of plantation-owner Auguste-Fréderic de Meuron and his tobacco factory. When de Meuron died, von May was the executer of his will, which requested the manumission of slaves Verissimo und Roccardo de Bahia and the manumission of the remaining slaves «according to their means and heir merits» after the liquidation of the company. Around 1855, there were still 18 slaves and 6 employees in the tobacco factory. When von May returned to Switzerland, he gave administration of his plantation to a fellow Swiss, probably Beat Ludwig Gabriel Wild (1789–1878) from Bex, Canton of Vaud/Berne, who was a plantation owner, too, and married to Rosina Anna Caroline May. Then von May sold his land and the 104 slaves to his nephew Ferdinand Karl Rudolf von Steiger (1825–1887) from Murten (Berne/Fribourg), who had been administrator since 1851. Ferdinand Karl Rudolf’s father, Albrecht Bernhard Steiger (1788–1866), had been born in Amsterdam and had been an officer in the Regiment von Wattenwyl at the service of the British. His grandfather, Albrecht Bernhard Steiger (1751–1819), had been an officer in the Regiment May at the service of the Dutch. The Steiger plantation was situated on the River Cachoeira and was about 6 kilometres along the river and 30–40 km into the jungle. West of Victoria, he owned another plantation called Salgado. On his plantations, he also grew sugar and cocoa. Maximilian, emperor of Mexico, visited «Baron von Steiger of Münsingen» during his expedition of 1859/60 to Brazil. Von Steiger returned to Switzerland in 1861 and 1873. All the slaves on his plantation were called Steiger. He had 10 children with Amalia da Sa Bethencourt e Camarao (1834–1880), daughter of a neigbouring plantation owner, who all lived in Ilhéus, Bahia. Ferdinand (Fernando) Steiger ( 1853–1923) took over his father’s estate in Ilhéus, and Cherubino Steiger (born 1854) became chief engineer of the Brazilian national railway company. Out of his immense wealth, Gabriel von May he donated the Montmirail Hospital in the Neuchâtel region to the public.
=> Eduard von Rodt (1810-1890) ran a coffee plantation in Rio Negro (Brazil), together with his uncle Albert Rudolf von Graffenried (1789-1834).
=> Auguste-Fréderic de Meuron (1789–1852) from a very globalised Neuchâtel family (grandfather and father were indiennes producers, one uncle merchant in Surinam, two uncles merchants and plantation administrators on Grenada) arrived in Bahia in 1817 after an apprenticeship in the coffee, sugar, indigo and cotton trade with «Coulon, Meuron et Cie.» in Paris and after working in Portugal in the company founded by David de Pury. In 1819, he founded a snuff tobacco factory, which very successfully produced «Arèa Preta». In 1826, he moved his factory from Arèa Preta to Solar de Unhão and founded branch establishments in Rio de Janeiro (1832) and Pernambuco (1836). In 1837 he returned to Switzerland a very rich man. In 1855, the Rio factory workforce included 18 slaves.
=> Heinrich Däniker (1795-1866) from Zurich emigrated to Brazil, and in 1827, he entered the textile trade and later exported coffee. The couple Heinrich and Cecile Däniker-Haller(1816-1887) owned slaves for tranporting goods and for the household. They lived in Petrópolis/Teresópolis from 1846 on, and their house-slaves were Antonio and Caetano. Their neighbour was plantation-owner Constantin Fischer, who had cultivated vine, coffee, and tea since 1819 together with Jean-Albert Fischer. Because of the yellow fever, the Däniker family left Brazil in 1852, but in 1853 Heinrich Däniker-Haller had to return to Teresópolis to organise his succession. His wife had written a sentimental poem on the death of slave Caetano, narrating his life from his capture in Africa to the «New World».
=> David Schwab (1748–1823) from Biel (Berne) together with François Verdan (1747–1818) from Sugiez/Neuchâtel/Biel administered an indiennes factory in Torres Novas (Lisbon) from 1780 on. Together with Henri de Meuron (1742–1825), Schwab created the company «Schwab & Meuron» to revive the banking and trading towards Brazil (trade in diamonds) which David de Pury (Henri de Meuron’s uncle) had established from Lisbon.
=> The Swiss colony of Nova Friburgo was founded 1819–1821 by a group of emigrants from Fribourg (830), from the Jura and the Bernese Jura region (500), from the Valais (160), from Aargau (143), Lucerne (140, among them members of the families Pfiffer, Wagenbach, Waser, Huber, Fehlmann, Rüttimann, Muggli, Imbach, Haslimann, Luterbach, Hunkeler, etc.), Solothurn (118), Vaud (90), Schwyz (17), Neuchâtel (5) and Geneva (3). Among the conditions to be met by the emigrants was being Catholic, adopting the Portuguese nationality and swearing an oath of allegiance to the king of Portugal. In exchange, they were granted a compensation for the departure, land, cattle and the right to own slaves. The Swiss consul in Rio, Charles Perret-Gentil, wrote that of the 1600 settler of 1820, only 710 or 254 families remained in Nova Friburgo, with a total of 152 slaves (according to the 1841 census). According to the census of 1851, Nova Friburgo had a population total of 4810, with 1764 of them being slaves. Moreover, many Swiss immigrants left Nova Friburgo, an area marked for diversified agriculture, to become coffee planters and slave owners elsewhere (especially in the coffee-producing region of Cantagalo).
=> In 1872, 29, 453 people lived in Cantagalo, 57% of them (16,805) were slaves. geographically, Cantagalo was part of the Vale do Paraíba. One of the Swiss settlers who in 1826 moved directly to Cantagalo was Henri Bon (born 1806) from Geneva. He was the third son of a Geneva watchmaker and was able to use some his inheritance. Henrique José da Silva Bon mentioned that his great-great-grandfather Henri Bon was a slaveholder and did not see any problem in that. Apparently, he adopted completely to the Portuguese model and bought himself slaves. «That romantic idea that the Swiss found slavery reprehensible is false,» Henrique said. «When they arrived, they thought – for a few weeks or months – that slavery was scandalous, then considered it a good business model.»
=> Johann Heinrich Dietrich (1814-1877) from Zurich became the Swiss vice-consul and a planter («própero fazendeiro») in Cantagalo.
=> Arnold Alfred (Staehelin) (1822-1892) from a patrician and very globalised Basel family emigrated to Brazil to become the founding father of the Brazilian branch. He lived in São Pedro de Alcântara as a «farmer». There are indications, that the German/Swiss colony also held slaves. A Staehelin family genealogy mentions «several hundred descendants in Southern Brazil, mostly in the Santa Catarina province».
=> The colony of Leopoldina in the State of Bahia was founded in 1818 by five immigrants, three of them Swiss: Abraham Langhans, Louis Langhans und David Pache. They were slave-owners as early as 1819. Later came members of the Swiss families Beguin, Borel, Huguenin, Jaccard and Montandon. In the 1820s, many of the Swiss settlers started practising slavery on their coffee-plantations. Merchant Johann Martin or Joao Martinho Flach (1781–1855) from Schaffhausen, who was for many years secretary, confidant and credit granter of Brazilian empress Leopoldina, owned the plantation Helvécia, as large as 7500 football grounds and with more than 100 slaves in 1848. Helvécia was one of the largest coffee plantations of the 19th century. By the end of the 1850s, there were 200 whites as opposed to 2000 black slaves on the 40 Leopoldina plantations. When Joao Martinho died, the plantation and its slaves passed into the hands of his son Johannes Flach. When he died in 1868, there were 151 slaves recorded on Helvécia. In 1875, Johannes Flach’s widow sold the plantation and returned to Switzerland. Traveller and scientist Johann Jakob von Tschudi (1818–1889), when he visited the plantation in 1866, stressed slavery as a factor for the colony’s success and claimed that «in general», the slaves received «humane treatment» there.
=> In 1882, there was a slave-rebellion on a large slave plantation in Helvécia (Caravelas District). It belonged to Frédéric-Louis Jeanmonod (possibly 1835–1916) from Provence (Canton of Vaud), who was the Swiss vice-consul at that time. Leopoldina colony had become so important that Switzerland created a consular office the neighboring town of Caravelas in 1861. Jeanmonod was the office-holder 1861–1881, until he was made vice-consul.
=> Jakob Laurenz Gsell (1815–1896) from St.Gallen was a merchant in Rio de Janeiro 1836–1850. He worked his way up through the companies «Romberg, Schleiden und Töpken» (import of manufactured goods from Germany, export of coffe and sugar), «Thibaud, Boetz u. Compagnie», and «Boy, Goumier and Andrea». He then set up his own company together with fellow countryman Jakob Friedrich Billwiler: «Billwiller, Gsell & Co.» (with partners Reinhold Laquai from St.Gallen and Heinrich David from Basel) in 1840. They imported textiles from Europe and exported cotton and coffee among others goods. The merchants bought, hired, sold, and owned domestic slaves, and Gsell himself resorted to whipping his domestic slave for corporal punishment. His letters demonstrate that he cared much more for business than for the fate of the slaves around him.
=> Lucas Jetzler (1798–1863) from Schaffhausen followed his brother Ferdinand to Brazil, where together with Jean Rudolphe Trümpy from the Canton of Glarus they founded the sugar, coffee, and tobacco merchant house «Jetzler Brothers & Trümpy» in 1829. In 1855, Lucas Jezler withdrew from business in order to trade tobacco in Cachoeira. He was active in the slave trade and when he died, his inventory recorded 13 slaves.
=> Carlos Ferdinand Keller, a Brazilian son of a Swiss who already worked in the area, succeeded «Jezler, Trümpy & Cia.» as «Keller & Cie.». The new company traded in cocoa to Switzerland and lent money and goods to plantation owners. Without extensive loans from the merchant house «Keller & Cia./Wildberger & Cia.», the creation of cocoa plantations on a large scale in southern Bahia would not have been possible. Keller also owned a plantation, and moreover invested in other plantations. He had himself a ship built in order to transport cocoa from southern Bahia directly to France. When Carlos Ferdinand Keller withdrew from business, Emil Wildberger from Schaffhausen and Hermann Braem, a Swiss who came to Brazil in 1880 to work in the largest cocoa buying and exporting company of that time, took over as «Wildberger & Cia.». Emil Wildberger owned ships to carry cocoa to the coast. In the 20th century, the cocoa exporting firm «Wildberger & Cia.» managed to become the largest exporter of cocoa in Brazil, among all other competitors, from the 1930s until the early 1950s.
=> Johann Jakob von Tschudi (1818–1889) from the Canton of Glarus was a Swiss naturalist, explorer and diplomat, who visited Brazil and other South American countries 1857–1859 and who became Swiss ambassador to Brazil in 1860. Tschudi realised that slavery would be abolished in Brazil, but he held racist views on Afro-Brazilians and claimed that with African slaves, a new and «evil element» had entered the Brazilian population. He theorized on the four main races of man: the Caucasia, the Mongolian, the Ethiopian, and the American. According to Tschudi, «any race mixing with negroes» would «move backwards». The mulatto was to him in general «extremely sensuous, wanton, reckless, shirking work, devoted to the game and to drinking, vindictive, artful, and shifty» and tended to become a criminal. On the mulatto woman, he had this to say:
«Even in the face of the most beautiful mulatto woman there is not a trace of nobility to be found. The nose is always broad, the lips more or less bulging, the gaze without spirit, but fiery, sensual and challenging, the complexion yellow-brown and the skin exhales a specifically disgusting smell.»
The slave, according to Tschudi, was unable to make good use of his newly won freedom. Being too proud, he would refused to do the work as a free man which he had done as a slave. When the Swiss government in 1864 was confronted with the question what to do with Swiss citizens who were slaveholders in Brazil, they relied on a report by their special envoy Johann Jakob von Tschudi and came to the conclusion that slavery did not imply a crime and that Swiss merchants, craftsmen and diplomats could not be expected to make a living without the work of slaves. Tschudi is also know for trading a bottle of cognac for the statuette of Ekeko, the Tiwanakan god of abundance and prosperity, in 1858 while traveling in the Andean highlands. The members of the Swiss government who defended and justified slavery in 1864 were: Jakob Dubs (1822-1879), parti radical-démocratique; Karl Schenk (1823-1895), parti radical-démocratique; Melchior Josef Martin Knüsel (1813-1889), parti radical-démocratique; Constant Fornerod (1819-1899), parti radical-démocratique; Friedrich Frey-Herosé (1801-1873), parti radical-démocratique; Wilhelm Matthias Naeff (1802-1881), parti radical-démocratique; Jean-Jacques Challet-Venel (1811-1893), parti radical-démocratique.
3.4 Southern Africa
The Dutch Cape Colony is so closely linked to the Dutch East Indies that it is sometimes difficult to attribute one person or members of one colonially involved family to either 3.4 or 3.5 (e.g. in the case of Johann Joachim Stähelin or the Diodati/Burlamacchi families).
=> Between 1652 and 1795, some 450 men (and a few women) arrived at the Cape from Switzerland, more than a third from the Canton of Berne. Half of then were soldiers first, 10% were officers or part of the VOC administration. A considerable number of them became slave-owners.
=> Jan Sausche from Rougemont in the Canton of Berne/Vaud arrivved at the Cape as a corporal. He worked as a blacksmith, acquired citizenship, and in 1751 owned a house-slave.
=> When Johann Heinrich Studer from Zurich died in 1804, he left his German widow, three sons, two daughters, 2 slaves, 19 trek-oxen and 34 heads of cattle.
=> Hans David Soeblee from the Canton of Berne/Vaud served as a soldier, rose in the administration, received a pension from the VOC and retired to his farm. In 1792, he lived with a khoikhoi woman and had manx children. In his last will, he left everything to his «Bastard Khoi woman Ester of the Cape» and decreed that his slaves were not to be sold.
=> Alexander Blanck (born ca. 1650–1700) from Schaffhausen came to the Cape in the pay of the VOC. In 1670 he was working as a tar burner in Table Bay, later the same year as a guard on duty at Fort Kyckuyt. When his contract with the VOC ended in 1674, he remained at the Cape as a settler. In 1681, Blanck was granted 145 hectares west of Klapmuts in the Stellenbosch District, which he named Groenfontein. In 1692, he had four horses, 44 head of cattle, 340 sheep and 6000 vines. In 1676, he had bought the sixteen-year-old slave Claas Caste van der Kaap, a «half breed», for 95 rixdalers, in 1677 Lijsbeth van Madagascar for 13 rixdalers. At this price she must have been very young.
=> Nikolaus Laubscher (Claas Loubser) from Fräschels in the Canton of Fribourg was first recorded at the Cape in 1676 when he bought a small farm near the mouth of the Salt River (now a suburb of Cape Town). He was assigned one slave by the VOC council. In 1682, he owned two slaves, 11 heads of cattle, and 50 sheep. Later he owned many slaves from Madagaskar, Moçambique, and from the East. These are his documented slave purchases (with age and price): 1685 David Casta Chianaeu (18, Rds. 56), 1686 Hendrick van Madagascar (18) and Maria van Madagascar (18, 19, Rds. 90), 1686 Adriaen van Madagascar (18/19, Rds. 48), 1688 Anthonij van Mozambique (18, f 226), 1690 Titus van Bengale (12, Rds. 60), 1692 Thobe Ginjams van Madras (10, Rds. 60), 1692 Roffing van Paleacatta (13/14, Rds. 60), 1695 Titus van Batavia (18, Rds. 105), 1696 Claas van Macassar (25, 100 «enkele Spaanse matten»), 1697 Michiel van Madagascar (8, Rds. 76), 1698 Thamar van Macassar (23/24, Rds. 100), 1698 Kees van Trancquebar (24, Rds. 70). One of his slaves was «David of Malabar», who allegedly molested his Dutch wife and was whipped and put in chains accordingly. Later, a group of slaves escaped under David’s leadership. They were caught, and David was sentenced to be broken on the wheel. In 1700, Laubscher owned 12 male and 4 female slaves, in 1719, shortly before his death, 26 male slaves, 2 female slaves, 3 slave boys and 1 slave girl. When he died, he owned three farms in the Cape Town region and four town houses in Cape Town, one of them in Heerengracht, today’s Adderly Street, the main street of the central business district. His sons become wealthy farmers, too, and a grandson called «Loubser» was said to be one of the richest farmers of the country with his farm «Groot Rietfontein» on the Berg River.
=> Jakob Krebs (before 1670–ca. 1709) from Berne may have arrived at the Cabo de Goede Hoop in 1683, and after serving his five-year contract with the VOC, he settled there as a free tanner and shoemaker in 1688. He was the first Swiss tradesman on record at the Cape. He hired soldiers, preferably with some knowledge of shoemaking, from the VOC. In 1692 he married Sophia Vinck of Amsterdam. By 1701 his household included one servant and four male slaves who probably assisted in the workshop. Documented slave purchases (with age and price): 1696 Titus van Tranquebaer (15, 95 Rds.), 1697 Anthonij van Trancquebare (18, Rds. 91), 1697 Camba van der Kust Coromandel (30, Rds. 100), 1699 Philip van Batavia (25, Rds. 130), 1699 Dorothea van Bengale (20, Rds. 45), 1699 Dorothea van Bengale (20, Rds. 40).
=> Andre Gauch (Gausch, Gousch, Goosche, Gauché, Goos) (ca. 1660–1698), his wife Jacqueline Decré (ca. 1664–1691) and their son Steven Gous (born c. 1684) were a Huguenot family from Geneva. From Amsterdam, where a girl was born, they embarked on the «Spierdijk» for the Cape Colony. Father and son reached the Cape alone in 1691, the mother and sister having died during the voyage. André Gauch married Jannetje de Clercq in 1691 in the Nederduitsch Gereformeerde Kerk in Stellenbosch. They had two sons and two daughters. In 1698, André Gauch was murdered at his homestead. He had purchased the following slave (with age and price): 1694 Claas van Madagascar (24/25, Rds. 90). Steven Gous (1684–before 1758) married Catharine Bok (ca. 1705–ca. 1779), a former slave girl aged 13, daughter of Darius van Bengale and Anna Groothenning van Bengale, in 1718 in the Nederduitsch Gereformeerde Kerk at Stellenbosch.
=> Niklaus Wiederkehr (Nicolaas Wederkeer) (birthdate unknown, died 1719) from Bremgarten (Canton of Aargau arrived at the Cabo de Goede Hoop in 1694 on the «Ijsselmonde»and served as a VOC soldier 1696–1706, when he became a free burgher and a member of the Cape community. He may have made his living as a blacksmith. After his death an inventory was made of his belongings. among other things, he owned a house, household goods, and two male slaves.
=> Michiel Löw (Ley) (1670–1716) from Benken (Canton of Basel Land) arrived at the Cape in 1696. He was a butcher by trining, but began as a VOC soldier. He fathered an «illegitimate» daughter by Company Slave Lodge matron Armozijn Claes van de Caep. Magdalena Ley (1697–1738) was born in bondage and was owned by the VOC. In 1697, Ley married Engeltje Breda from Delft, Holland. In a conflict with the VOC of 1708, four of Ley’s slaves fled in an attempt to return to Madagascar but were recaptured after committing murders and robberies, and were executed with great savagery. The census of 1709 recorded him with wife, three sons and one daughter, two servants, fourteen slaves, four horses, thirty head of cattle, 300 sheep and two pigs, 6 000 vines and two leaguers of wine. Ley had purchased the farm Welgemeent comprising 3,95 hectares SE of Table Mountain. In 1710 he bought a second house. In 1715, Ley was elected Lieutenant of the Burghers and a year later he died. His widow hired Swiss VOC soldier Johannes Lister of Basel to help her carry on. Michiel Ley’s son Nicolaas Ley, (born ca. 1703) was a merchant and 2nd Commissioner for the Slave Trade at Madagascar, thus directly involved in the slave trade.
=> Lieutenant captain Jean-Ulrich Kiburg from Basel bought the «Hottentot’s Holland») after having commanded troops against «indigenous rebels» in Ceylon nachdem er Truppen gegen «eingeborene Aufständische» on Ceylon. In 1800, he had a farmhand, 18 male and 2 female slaves, 72 horses, 43 heads of cattle, 70 sheep and 18 barrels of wine.
=> In 1696, Johann Oberholzer from Aa near Wald (Canton of Zurich) came to the Cape as a 16-year-old soldier. Being a butcher by profession, he became wealthy and married into a rich family of Huguenots. Before getting married, he had lived with a coloured woman and had had a number of children with her. He moved to Stellenbosch, took over three farms from his father-in-law, and launched his political and military career. In 1712, he had a wife, two sons, 6 slaves, 11 horses, 81 heads of cattle, 500 sheep and 18,000 vines.
=> In 1696, Hans Michel Löw from Benken in the Canton of Basel Landschaft arrived at the Cape as a soldier. He soon became master butcher, meat trader and leading member of the local church. When four of his slaves tried to escape and flee back to Madagaskar, they were caught after several murderrs and robberies and punished with great cruelty. In 1709, was a wine producer and had a farm, a wife, three sons and a daughter, 2 servants, 14 slaves, 4 hourses, 30 heads of cattle, 300 sheep, 2 pigs and 6000 vines. His son Nicolaas became a welathy merchant and commissioner for the slave-trade on Madagascar.
=> From 1753 to 1757, Joseph Anton Grütter from St.Gallen did his military service in the rank of a corporal.
=> Between 1762 and 1781 Jan or Isaak Weiss from Solothurn served as executioner at the Cape. He was always assisted by two black slaves. His performance: eight hangings, five times breaking on the wheel (in one case plus pinching with red-hot pincers), beheading and paling, chopping off a hand, breaking all the limbs from the feet upwards and then killing with the coup de grace, strangling, thirteen whippings and branding with red-hot iron, four times only whipping, putting in the pillory plus whipping, and one sword-stroke on the head.
=> In 1783, the De Meuron Regiment arrived at the Cape. It had been raised in Switzerland by Charles Daniel de Meuron (1738–1806) from Neuchâtel. His military career: in the service of France and wounded in action in the Hallwyl Regiment in the Caribbean (1755–1765), in the service of the Swiss Guards in Paris (1765–1781), abortive project for Swiss soldier-settlers in French Guyana (1775–1780). He put his regiment of 1100 men, two thirds of which were Swiss protestants, at the service of the VOC to man the garrison at the Cape. In his household, De Meuron had 13 slaves, 11 horses and enormous amounts of furniture, silverware and paintings. The regiment remained until 1788, but its commander Charles Daniel de Meuron had left for Europe in 1786 already, together with two black slaves (or «servants») called Pedro and Vendredi.
=> Willem Bartholomé Eduard Paravicini di Capelli (1778–1848) was a descendant of the Grisons branch of the Paravicini family, who was born in the Netherlands to the mercenary officer Johan Caspar Paravicini di Capelli (1660–1761), who was born in Chur (Canton of Graubünden / Grisons). He started his military career in the family tradition at the age of nine as artillery cadet. He was commissioned a lieutenant in 1792 and took part in the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 in Flanders against the French. When the Netherlands became the Batavian Republic, a satellite state of revolutionary France, he left the army, only to re-join in 1802 as captain after the signing of the peace treaty of Amiens. He was appointed aide-de-camp of general J.W. Janssens (1762–1838), the future governor of the Cape Colony, where he arrived in 1802. In April 1803, Governor Janssens, Paravicini and the two local guides Dirk Gysbert and Daniel van Reenen set off on horseback on an expedition to explore the eastern Cape. They were accompanied by a detachment of dragoons with their servants and slaves. Their route took them (in today’s terms) as far as Port Elizabeth (skirting the coast), then they turned northward and went to Colesberg, then crossed the Great Karoo to reach Cape Town via Maatjesfontein and Ceres. They arrived in Cape Town on 13 August 1803. Paravicini kept a travel diary, which was published under the title «Reize in de Binnen-Landen van Zuid-Africa. Gedaan in den Jaare 1803». Dirk Gysbert van Reenen covered the same ground in his «Dag-verhaal eener reize naar de binnelanden van Africa beoosten de Kaap de Goede Hoop geleegen». Their different approaches to the same reality (outsider vs insider) are striking: Slavery is matter of course in Paravicini’s book, but is occasionally mentioned, e.g. when Paravicini tells of robbed Bushmen or free Hottentots kept as slaves. And he tells the story of a young slave who was castrated as punishment for absconding from work and being found on a neighbouring farm flirting with slave girls. In Cape Town rumours circulated about an impending attack by the British. Paravicini’s main job was to develop the defence capability of the Cape Colony and to increase defence readiness. At that time the French explorer, cartographer and naturalist Nicolas-Thomas Baudin (1754–1803) was on his last voyage of scientific exploration to Australia, where he discovered more than 2500 new species. He had two ships, the « Géographe» and the «Naturaliste». From Sydney he sent home the «Naturaliste», which had on board all of the specimens that had been discovered by Baudin and his crew. He then headed for Tasmania, before continuing to Timor. The «Naturaliste» arrived in Cape Town on 17 January 1804. Paravicini donated to the crew 30 birds and the skins of a Bontebok and two Springboks. In 1804, it became known that Paravicini had been recalled to the Netherlands. Because there was a war in Europe he had to wait until April 1805 for a passage to the Netherlands, where he continued his military career.
=> Rudolph Antony Baron de Salis (1761-1851) from a noble family originally from Soglio in the Canton of Graubunden/Grisons, started his military career as a cadet in the regiment of his father, Jean Baptiste des H.R. Rijksridder de Salis (1721-1803). In 1778, he became a subaltern merchant at the service of the VOC in Batavia, mayor of the city of Breda in 1784, political councillor (number two behind the governor) at the Cape in 1802, where he got married in 1804. He was elevated to the Dutch nobility as a «Jonkheer».
=> His brother Adriaan Maurits Theodorus de Salis (1788-1834) from a noble family originally from Soglio in the Canton of Graubunden/Grisons was born in Breda (Holland). Shortly after the arrival of his father at the Cape, he left for Java with recommendation to Governor General Albertus Henricus Wiese. In 1804, he was appointed clerk to the secretariat of the governor of the police at the Cape of Good Hope. In Java, he became the first commander at the office of secretary-general Hendrik Veeckens, and he was then particularly distinguished by Marshal Herman Willem Daendels, who appointed him his private secretary and commissioner of expenditures.
=> Roelof Diodati (1658–1723) from a Geneva family took service for the Dutch East India Company (VOC). From 1686-1687 he was bookkeeper on the «Jambi», a vessel plying between the Cape Colony, Mauritius, India and Batavia, regularly transporting slaves. Diodati sometimes bought and sold slaves for his own account. Between 1686 and 1692, he sold the following slaves: Pieter from Madagascar (aged 17), Orson and Jacob from Madagascar (14 & 15 respectively), Isak from Madagascar, Abraham from Madagascar (aged 20), Salomon from Madagascar(aged 16), Willem from Madagascar (aged 17/18), Daniel from Madagascar (aged 14), Aran from the Coast(aged 18/19), David from Madagascar (aged 16/17), David from Madagascar (aged 17/18), Jacob from the Coast (23/24), Aron from Malabar (aged 23/24), Coridon from Malabar (aged 24/25). In 1692 he bought the slaves Servidor from Bengal (aged 12) and Aron from Malabar (24/25). In 1690 he was officer (bookkeeper) aboard either the «Courtgene» or the «Honsholredijk» to serve at the Cape, in 1691 he was chosen as «praesident en commissarissen van kleine civile saken». In 1692 he appeared in the Cape’s muster roll as earning f 30 a month as «boekhouer van garnisoen». In 1692, Roeloff Diodati left the Cape with the «Duijfje» with orders to arrest the superintendent of Mauritius, Isaak Johannes Lamotius (1646–1718), and to succeed him. In 1692, he was appointed new Commander of the island of Mauritius, a post which he held until 1703. Diodati undertook to look for Hannibal, Scipio, Nimrod, Pakkolet, Scanderbek, and Diogenes – all slaves from Trancquebar – who had fled into the interior of Mauritius after the «Bengal Merchant», an English vessel, ran ashore on the island. In 1694, he married Catharina Zaaiman (1679–bef. 1735), born on Dutch Mauritius. Her grandmother had been the «Hottentot First Lady» Eva Meerhoff (c. 1643-1674), a Khoikhoi interpreter for Jan van Riebeek (1619–1677). Their four children are excluded from the published Duodati genealogy. In 1704, he arrived with his family at Batavia. There he was a merchant and a bookkeeper of the «ambagskwartier» in Batavia. Thereafter, Diodati became senior merchant and finally superintendent («opperhoofd») of Dejima (an artificial island off today’s Nagasaki), VOC’s trading post and center of «regulated prostitution» in Japan, until 1720. Diodati died in 1723, either in Japan, Batavia or back in the Netherlands.
=> Elisabeth Angelica Burlamacchi (1682-1728), from an Italian family a branch of which had settled in Geneva, daughter of Benjamin Burlamacchi, married Abraham Cranendon(c)k, born in Amsterdam, who had the following career: Fiscal at Hoogly (Bengal), Chief Merchant, 1714 successor of Willem Helot as Secunde (Deputy-Governor) at the Cape of Good Hope, 1715 arrival at the Cape, Member of the Council of Policy, 1717 president of the Orphan Chamber, Councillor Extraordinary. He died at the Cape in 1721. In 1722 his wife Elisabeth Angelica and one daughter returned to the Netherlands on the «Astrea».
=> Adriana Wilhelm(in)a Burlamacchi (1684-1760) from an Italian family a branch of which had settled in Geneva, the other daughter of Elisabeth Angelica Burlamacchi and Abraham Cranendon(c)k, married another of the Cape’s Secundes (Deputy-Governors), Joan/Johannes Cornelis d’Ableing / d’Ablaing (1663-1721), who had the following career: 1692 Junior Merchant & Cashier in Java, 1694 Merchant, 1696 Superintendent in Palembang (South Sumatra), 1698 summon to Batavia for questioning (private trading and shortfalls in his administration), 1699 marriage in Batavia, 1700 repatriation with family and loss of salary, 1706 readmission to VOC as Senior Merchant, 1707 arrival at the Cape of Good Hope on «Barnevelt» as Acting Governor and as successor of W.A. van der Stel. In 1708, Joan/Johannes Cornelis d’Ableing / d’Ablaing became Senior Merchant, Secunde (Deputy-Governor) & Chief Administrator under Governor Louis van Assenburgh, a bachelor, thus making his wife Adriana Wilhelm(in)a Burlamacchi de facto the Cape Colony’s First Lady. In 1710 Joan/Johannes Cornelis d’Ableing / d’Ablaing resigned as Secunde (Deputy-Governor)and left for Batavia, Dutch East Indies, where he became Councillor Extraordinary of India and President of the College of Orphan-Masters. In 1720 he was nominated Councillor of India. He died in Batavia in 1721 and was buried in Weltevreden, the European suburb of Batavia.
3.5 East Indies
The Dutch Cape Colony is so closely linked to the Dutch East Indies that it is sometimes difficult to attribute one person or members of one colonially involved family to either 3.4 or 3.5 (e.g. in the case of Johann Joachim Stähelin or the Diodati/Burlamacchi families).
=> Some 8,000 Swiss mercenaries were at the service of the Dutch colonial army in the East Indies (today’s Indonesia) from 1815 to WWI. Sometimes they made up as much as 10% of the European force. The biggest conflict they were involved in was the Aceh War (1873–1904). Swiss soldiers were part of special units patrolling the archipelago and using scorched earth tactics to subjugate local leaders.
=> Elie Ripon from Fribourg and from a family from the Canton of Vaud left Switzerland at the beginning of the 17th century. He initially served on a whaling expedition to Greenland, but took a serious dislike to the activity, so the next year he signed up with the Dutch East India Company, and was sent to the Far East. He turned his experiences of 1617–1627 as a captain in China, the Dutch East Indies, Japan, and Taiwan into a travelogue after his return to Switzerland. He had been sent to various locations in the Moluccas as well as to the islands to the East of Bali. Ripon gave an account of the fight between the Dutch and the Portuguese over Macau, which at the time hosted about 2,000 Portuguese, 20,000 Chinese and around 5,000 African slaves, brought by the Portuguese from their colonies in Angola and Mozambique. It was actually mostly the Africans who fought off the Dutch assault. After returning from Formosa to the East Indies, Ripon went on many more explorations of faraway islands and described fights against the Spanish, Portuguese, and local adversaries in Sumatra, Borneo and the Moluccas.
=> Philippe/Filippo/Phelipe Calandrin(i)/Calandrijn/Kalandrijn (1587-1649) from a Swiss-Genevan/Italian-Tuscan family was born in Frankfurt a.M., resided in London for a certain time and became a merchant in Amsterdam (1614) and Venice. He was appointed Duke of Savoy in 1623 and departed for Batavia with his wife Margaretha van der Meulen and their four daughters in 1646. Philippe Calandrini died at Batavia in 1649. Among the guardians and executors of his will was Pieter Kemp, former Captain of the Batavia Citizens› Militia and owner of slaves Dominga van Bengale and Maaij Ansela van Bengale, whom he sold to theCape of Good Hope’s first VOC Commander Jan van Riebeeck. Among the children: Charles (1620–ca. 1650), probably in East India before his father; served on Ternate, one of the Moluccas, and on Ambon, and led a wild life; Elisabeth (1621-1657), related to several commanders of the Cape; Susanna (1626-1696), who married Joannes Cunaeus (sheriff of Batavia, «raad-extraordinaris», «raad-ordinaris» of India, envoy with Cornelis Speelman to Persia, colonel of burgher watch & president of Council, «ordinaris Raedt van India», VOC jurist in Batavia, VOC commissioner at the Cape of Good Hope), Maria (1632-1671), who married Pieter Sterthemius, a senior Batavia merchant in the service of the VOC in the Dutch trading post of Suratte in India (today federal state of Gujarat) and on the Malabar Coast, VOC director in Dejima (Dutch trading post and centre of prostitution off Nagasaki, Japan) in 1650, trader in silver, salted vegetables and soy sauce, VOC director in Hooghly in Bengal in 1655; member of the «Raad van Indië» in 1658. The Calandrini Family intermarried into the following influential and trans-continental 17th century aristocratic, banking and trading families: Diodati, Burlamacchi, Turretinni and D’Ablaing as well as into some of the more important VOC merchant families like Van der Stel, Six, Bax, and Hinloopen.
=> The Wettstein company were the regular VOC printers in Amsterdam. The firm had been founded by Henricus Wettstein (1649-1726) from Basel, who had moved to Amsterdam and was a bookseller, publisher and printer. The printing house was continued by his sons Gerard (1680-1755) and Rudolf (1679-1717) and by Rudolf’s son Jacob Henry (1706-1779) and son-in-law William Smith. The firm printed books from 1667 to 1757. Among the many titles they printed for the VOC was the Malay translation of the Old Testament by George Henric Werndly (1694-1744) in 1733. In Batavia, the VOC produced their printed works in the «lands drukkerij».
=> Jean/Giovanni Diodati (1576–1649) from Geneva was a Protestant theologian, diplomat and translator with strong ties to Holland (Synod of Dordrecht, 1618-1619). His grandson was Jean Diodati (1658–1711), who was born in Leiden and died in the Dutch trading post Suratte, India (today federal state of Gujarat). His great-grandson Philippus Diodati (1686–1733) was born in Dordrecht. He left Holland with his parents at the age of 11, became a merchant and then the first director of the VOC grain store in Batavia.
=> Benjamin Burlamacchi (1643-1697), second cousin of Roeloff Diodati, was born in Geneva and became head of the trading house of the family in Amsterdam. Benjamin and his family (four children and wife) went to Bengal in 1691 aboard the «Silversteijn», arriving there in 1692. He died in Bengal.
=> Jean Diodati (1658-1711), brother of Roeloff Diodati was a merchant in both Holland and Surat (India).
=> Cornelia Adriana d’Ableing, daughter of Joan/Johannes Cornelis d’Ableing / d’Ablaing and Adriana Wilhelm(in)a Burlamacchi, was baptised in Batavia in 1715. She first married Johan Herman Theling from Itztehoe (Schleswig-Holstein), Councillor Extraordinary of India, and then married again: Willem Bernard Albinus (1705–1751), Governor of Malacca.
=> Salomon Diodati (1688-1753), nephew of Roeloff Diodati, had the following career: merchant in Holland; 1720 Merchant in VOC & Vicechairman on Marriages and Petty Affairs at Batavia, marriage in Batavia. His travels he recorded in a personal diary, a significant part of which has survived: «Reijsen gedaan door Salomon Diodati ‘t sederd a:o 1697 tot ao 1733 in dienst der Nederlandse Oost Indische Compagnie, en Naar gelaten aan syn twee sonen Marten Jacob en Anthonij Josua Diodati». Salomon Diodati eventually returned to Geneva to claim his title as head of the Diodati family. Died at The Hague in 1753.
=> Théophile Cazenove (1708–1760) from a Geneva family of Huguenots settled in London in the mid-eighteenth century with his son Jean Henri, a merchant who was naturalised in 1762. Jean Henri (John Henry) Cazenove (1737– 1817) operated as a merchant dealing with the French and English East India Company, building a large connection to Lisbon, as well as drawing on connections in France and Amsterdam. He became involved in finance at an early stage, dealing in government stock and later securing business on behalf of the US government, distributing dividend payments to English holders of US securities. In 1772, he was involved in supplying bonds to the owner of Bacolet plantation on Grenada, one of the most profitable Grenada sugar estates with over 30 slaves. John Henry Cazenove was a merchant and director of the East India Company, probably in the 1760s.
=> In 1702, Laurenz Halder from St.Gallen arrived in Java as a mercenary soldier on a VOC ship. In Batavia, he met one Nägeli from Teufen AR, a simple mercenary like him, and the wealthy Ludwig Caesar from the Canton of Glarus, who made his living as an inn-keeper, later lived in a mansion and not only owned several horses and coaches but also several slaves. Halder also made the acquaintance of a widowed woman from the Zollikofer family from St.Gallen. During a sea voyage, Halder was enslaved in Malakka. After his realease (possibly aftera ranson payment), he returned to Batavia and then via Holland to St.Gallen, where he got married in 1708.
=> The following Swiss are mentioned in 1727 in the context of a VOC shipwreck en route to Batavia: that of the vessel «Zeewijk»: Hans Pieter Anthonij from Biel (Bienne) in the Canton of Berne, Joseph Grand from Lausanne (Canton of Berne, today Waadt), Nicolaas Ledderfrom Biel (Bienne) in the Canton of Berne, Olderik Miller from Dornach in the Canton Solothurn, Abraham Saigne from Neuchâtel.
=> Hans Jacob from Basel travelled aboard the «Batavia» to East India. In 1620, he was executed as a murderer in Batavia
=> In 1780, one Bagneux des Côteaux, a former «sous-lieutenant» in the Regiment of the 100 Swiss, was ensign in the Regiment stationed in Pondichéry (today Puducherry) in SE India.
=> One François Pierre Félix Vonderweidt (1766–1810), brother of Marie-Joseph-Simon-Alexis von der Weid (who died in Saint-Domingue) was from the Pondichéry branch of that patrician family from Fribourg. His grandfather had stayed in that French outpost in today’s India. In 1774, François Pierre Félix Vonderweidt joined a company owned by his father in the Swiss Regiment de Waldner (later Vigier). He served the French and was made lieutenant in 1788. He fought in Nancy and received the Croix de St-Louis. He sympathised with the French Revolution in 1792, but then returned to Fribourg and entered local politics. Later, he entered French services again and was made baron de l’empire in 1808.
=> Johann Joachim Stähelin (1760–1815) from St.Gallen became a mercenary soldier and in the 1780s served the Dutch in different places in Europe. He then travelled to Java as an accountant in the service of the «Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie» (VOC) and returned to the Cape Colony with 100 slaves on board. After returning to Holland, his second voyage took him to the Cape again, from where he set sail for Batavia. There he was made overseer of 300 slaves on the estate of a German colonist. On a slave market in Bantam, he purchased «27 pieces, all young negroes of both sexes». After three years as a slave-overseer, he was ordered back to the Cape, where he became a private teacher for slave-holding colonists. In 1801, he returned to St.Gallen, became a private teacher and published an account of his travels and adventures in 1811.
=> Jakob Christoph Ziegler (1791–1825) from Zurich was a colonial official on Sumatra and a mercenary soldier in Dutch services. In 1815, he joined the Piemontese army and rose from the rank of private to junior adjutant. Then he served the French army as furir and was promoted to sergeant. November 1820 – February 1821 he sailed on board a Dutch military vessel from Ostende to Batavia, where he worked as a troop trainer and took part in various colonial military operations against local rulers. After the conquest of the city of Palembang on Sumatra in 1821, he was appointed under General Hendrik Merkus de Kock as a non-commissioned officer to control the local market. He left this post again in 1822 to become a «third clerk». He also worked as an engineer’s clerk on the reconstruction of the sultan’s fortress in Palembang in 1823. Ziegler continued to rise in the colonial social structure of Sumatra. He was promoted to «second clerk» and, as a colonial official, owned his own house with at least three slaves. Shortly before his transfer to the main military administration in Batavia, he died unexpectedly of a tropical disease in Muntok.
=> Elias Paravicini (1733–?) was a son of Johan Caspar Paravicini (1660-1761), who was born in Chur (Grisons) and went to the Netherlands as a mercenary officer of a Swiss regiment. Elias Paravicini was born in Breda in Holland. He joined the «Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie» (VOC) in 1757, departed for Batavia in October 1757, where he arrived via the Cape in April 1758. He returned to the Netherlands in 1759 as secretary of the return fleet and left the VOC. In 1762, he re-joined the VOC as a lieutenant, left the Netherlands to arrive at Colombo in 1763. In 1765 he turned up as artillery lieutenant and engineer in Galle (Ceylon). In 1766 he was recorded as captain and engineer in Colombo. In 1773, Paravicini became «commandant» of Kalpitiya and Puttalam (about 130 km north of Colombo). As «commandant» he had to collect the rent the local people had to pay to the Dutch. He was chairman of the district council and could impose fines. If he wanted to use the sjambok (a heavy leather whip) or chains as punishment, he had to obtain consent from Colombo. Heavier criminals were judged in Colombo, and Muslim slaves did not fall under his jurisdiction; they were judged by their imams. The «commandant» was in charge of a sergeant, a corporal, 14 common soldiers, a gunner and two servants. In 1763, Paravicini was transferred to Colombo. After 1787, he was referred to as major and chief of artillery, a position he held until his death. According to a VOC-document he died in 1794. Other dates of his death vary between 1795 and 1808.
=> The UK Slave Register 1813–1834 has 280 slaves in the hands of owners named Cazenove, Cazeneuve, Casenave, Casnave, etc. in Grenada, Trinidad, and Mauritius.
=> Roelof Diodati (1658–1723) was appointed governor of Mauritius 1692–1703. He then moved to Batavia, where he became a merchant and accountant in 1707. In 1709 he married Catharina Zaaiman, born on Dutch Mauritius. Her grandmother had been the «Hottentot First Lady» Eva Meerhoff (c. 1643-1674), a Khoikhoi interpreter for Jan van Riebeek. Diodati became the chief trader at the VOC post at Dejima (Japan) in 1720 and died in Batavia in 1723.
=> One Jakob Laurenz Zollikofer (1698–1721) from a globalised St.Gallen family died in Batavia. One Georg Niklaus Zollikofer (1676–1706) died in the East Indies, too.
=> Hans Heinrich von Waldkirch from a noble Schaffhausen family was in the military service of the French, then of the Dutch. His son Hans Heinrich von Waldkirch served as a lieutenant of the Dutch and died in 1733 im Batavia.
=> Friedrich Ulrich Hartmann from Zurich, son of Captain Hans Conrad Ulrich Hartmann, died in Batavia in 1733.
=> Jacques Christophe Gonzebat (1734-1777) from a St.Gallen/Thurgau family became a merchant in Pondichéry (French/British India), where he died at the age of 43. Anton Gonzenbach (1712–1737) from Hauptwil (Canton of Thurgau) was in the service of the Dutch VOC and died in Batavia.
=> Louis (Ludwig) Escher was born in Zurich in 1732 and entered the Zurich Regiment de Lochmann (later Steiner, 1752–1792 at the service of the French) as ensign in 1759. In 1762, he was promoted to «sous-lieutenant» and to «premier lieutenant» in 1764. He took part in the campaigns of the regiment in 1750, 1760 and 1762, and fought in the Battle of Warburg and the siege of Munster. In 1774, he quit the service of the French and demanded a leave plus a pension in order to go the Americas and went to Holland. However, when his financial situation worsened, he was forced to take up service in the Dutch East India Company as part of the troops employed on the island of Ceylon. He then approached the French to enter into their services again. He sailed to the Coromandel Coast and was put at the head of a company of Sepoys in the Trincomalee Batallion. He took part in the campaign of the squadron of 1782 and participated in the siege of Trincomalee, and in the battle against the British of 3rd September 1782, he lost all his belongings when the vessel «L’Orient» suffered shipwreck. Escher then demanded to be compensated for his losses in the shipwreck, a demand to which the French authorities consented in 1785. He was ordered to sail to Île de France on the corvette «L’Auguste» and from there on the commercial vessel «Le Dromaidaire» to Lorient. He then returned to his home town of Zurich in 1785. Hans Jakob (de) Steiner, Field Marshal and colonel of a Swiss regiment, employed himself for Escher to be granted a pension by the French authorities.
=> The Schlatter family from St.Gallen counted among their members numerous councilors and two deputy mayors. Some became merchants, trader in colonial goods, thgeologians, and textile manufacturers, and the family globalised in the direction of Italy, Germany, the Dutch West and East Indies, Russia, and British North America. One Salome Schlatter married Johannes Leutmann (1643–1695) from St.Gallen as his second wife. Leutmann died in Batavia. One Jacob Schlatter from Schaffhausen entered the services of the Dutch East India Company in 1733. He died in the East in 1737. One Johann Georg Schlatter entered the services of the Dutch East India Company in 1787.
=> Daniel and François de Treytorrens, cousins of David-Philippe de Treytorrens (1721-1788) from Yverdon, Canton of Berne / Vaud lived their lives in Batavia.
=> Daniel Burnat (1723–1802) from Moudon, Canton of Berne / Vaud, son of an officer at the service of the French, went to Holland to become a tutor for the Verelst family, whom he accompanied to Turin in 1750. In 1753, he moved to the East Indies, where he became a merchant first in Batavia, then Surate. For three years he was the commander of a fort on the Malabar Coast, and in 1765 became the general administrator of the Dutch trading station in Colombo. Also in 1765, he was made interim governor of the island of Ceylon, 1767–1787 he was commander of Matara Province in the South of Ceylon. In a letter to his sister-in-law, he disclosed the secret that together with his house-keeper, he had an 11-year-old girl child. In 1789, he wrote about his acquaintance with Pierre-Frédéric de Meuron (1747–1813 ) from Neuchâtel, whose regiment was stationed in Colombo Castle. Daniel Burnat quit his post on account of his declining eyesight.
=> In 1767, one Johann Heinrich Waser from Zurich, surgeon in Batavia, made the Zurich Botanical Gardens a gift of several plants and seeds.
=> Louis Wyrsch (1793–1858), aka «Borneo Louis», son of on officer in the service of Spain, entered the Dutch military service in 1814, and fought in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. He then joined the Dutch colonial army, and took part in the conquest of Bali in 1816. In 1825, be was appointed civilian commander of Borneo’s southeast coast and was stationed in Banjarmasin. He was wounded in the attempt to subdue a local rebellion. While in Borneo, he had a relationship with his «huishoudster» (housekeeper) Johanna van den Berg (Ibu Silla), most probably also his slave and a Malay from Java. Together they had four children, two of which died in infancy. In 1832, Wyrsch returned to Switzerland with his children Alois and Constantia, but without Johanna van den Berg. His son Alois Wyrsch (1825–1888) became the first person of colour in a Cantonal Government (Nidwalden) and the first MP of colour in the Swiss Federal Parliament (Nationalrat).
=> Jean Frederic Theodore Mayor (1797–1848) was born in Geneva. His father came from a family from Echallens, his mother was a member of the Dutch branch of the Maritz family from Burgdorf. He came to Batavia on board the Nassau in 1816. In 1820 he had risen to become Secretary of the Residence Semarang, then he became Resident of Maros in Celebes. In 1828 he was installed as Governor of Makassar. 1834–1843 he was Resident of Soerakarta, then Resident of Besoeki. In 1846, he was given the function of Government Commissionary for Balinese matters, e.i. he experienced the beginning of the cruel war against the Balinese for inclusion in the Dutch Empire. Mayor was married to the Buginese woman Sabibia, born a slave. She was given the name Voll at birth. She was probably the daughter of the slave Miena and a member of the influential Voll family.
=> Jean-Antoine Baud (1728– 1806) from Celigny (Canton of Geneva), scion of a patrician family from the Geneva region, left for Holland as a simple soldier in one of the Swiss (Bernese) regiments from the Vaud region. He married Dutchwoman Kristina Klinkensteen in 1762 while staying in the garrison at The Hague. In 1795, the Swiss regiments were disbanded. Jean-Antoine Baud left two sons: Jean and Abram.
=> Franz Josef Michael Letter (1800–1880) from Zug was in the military service of the Dutch from 1819–47. He was stationed in Batavia and Semarang (Java) and in Padang (Sumatra) from 1838–47, towards the end of his service as Major of the 13th Batallion of Infantry. He returned to Switzerland to persue a military career (staff colonel in the Federal Swiss Army, brigadier) and a political career (member and chairman of the cantonal government of Zug).
=> Theodorus Azon Giacometti (1758-1806) was born in Vicosporano in the Canton of Grisons. His son Jan Jacometti (1796 – 1820) was born in Rotterdam and died in Havanna, Cuba. Another son, Theodorus Josephus Azon Jacometti (1789–1856) was born in Rotterdam and died in Batavia. He was captain of the Durch merchant navy from 1818 onwards and undertook regular voyages on the ship «de Jonge Anthonij» between Holland and Batavia and on «de Drie Gesusters» between Batavia and Japan. In 1823, he accompanied Johan Willem de Sturler (17741855) to become the chief trader of the Dutch East India Company in Dejima near Nagasaki. In 1832 he settled in Batavia as a factor, shipping agent, and merchant banker. The company Jacometti & Co existed 1832-1864. He imported ropes, linseed oil, anchors, sailcloth, sailors› instruments, maps, army supplies, chains, paint, pitch, ship’s compasses, playing cards, medicine, sheets, bedcloths, paper, glassware, and tobacco. On a wholesale level, he exported coffee, arak, nutmeg, Chinese porcelain, wood, and mace. His daughter was Anna Louise Cornelia Maria Frederika A Jacometti (1822–1858), who was born in Batavia and died on the Cocos Islands (today Australia), a private forced-labour colony producing coconut oil, later a British colony. In 1898, a company Jacometti & Co. was still registered in Batavia under its director, one W. H. Jacometti.
=> Guillaume-Louis Baud (1801-1891), Jean-Antoine Baud’s grandson, was posted as civil servant in the general secretariat in the East Indies in 1824. In 1830, he was appointed secretary of Kadoe (Java), in 1832, he became Assistant Resident of Kadoe and was temporarily put in charge of the administration of this district. At the end of 1832, he was appointed captain of the Kadoe militia, which was to be set up. A former mutineer, Djaja Sindergh, severely assaulted Baud and inflicted a serious wound on him. Sindergh’s head was given to Baud by native chiefs, who kept it until the end of his life. In 1834, Baud was promoted to Resident of Kediri. He was highly regarded by Governor-General Johannes van den Bosch, who in 1830 had introduced the «Cultuurstelsel», a cultivatioin system which turned most of Java into a gigantic plantation. In 1838, Baud became Resident of Semarang. He was administrator of the rubber plantation Adolina Oeloe on behalf of the company Serdang-Cultuur-Maatschappij and was «minister of agriculture & land cultivation», until he returned to the Netherlands in 1845 due to health reasons. In 1848, Baud was appointed Minister of Colonies, from which position he resigned after six months, following a disagreement with his colleagues. He was appointed State Council in extraordinary service in 1849, specifically to sit in on colonial and financial affairs. In 1858, Baud asked to be dismissed from the Council of State, and later refused an appointment as Governor-General and Minister of Colonies. Baud was appointed royal commissioner of the Dutch Trading Company in 1867. He was also co-founder and from 1851–1886 chairman of the East and West India Education Society.
=> Abram Baud’s two sons were Jean-Chrétien and Frédéric, who would, as a family history boasts, «rise to the highest destinies and of whom both Holland and Switzerland can be proud.» Jean-Chrétien Baud (1789–1859) started his career in the Dutch navy. At the age of 18, he left Holland for Java, but the ship «La Mouche», which he was travelling on, was captured by the Anglo-Portuguese fleet off San Salvador. He regained Holland in 1810 and was again sent to Java in the rank of an ensign at sea. He then left the marine and worked his way up the civil service. In 1815, he married Henriette Senn van Basel, who had Swiss roots, too, and with whom he had 12 children. In 1819, he was General Secretary of the government of the Dutch East Indies. He returned to Holland in 1822 and went back to the East Indies in 1824 as Head of the Department for the East Indian Colonies. He there became a member of the committee appointed by Royal Decree in 1828 with the task to indicate the means to subdue the revolt in Java. This refers to the so-called Java War or Diponegoro War, fought in central Java from 1825–1830 at the cost of some 200,000 native and 8000 European lives. When his wife died in 1831, he married Ursula Susanna van Bram, widow of a Batavia merchant, with whom he had five more children. In 1832, he replaced Governor Johannes van den Bosch. In 1833 he was nominated Vice President of the Government of the Dutch East Indies in Batavia and then provisional Governor General. In 1836, he returned to Holland first to be appointed Extraordinary Councillor of State, then Minister of the Marine and the Colonies 1840–1848. In 1850, he was a Member of Parliament, and in 1854 Minister of State. In 1858, he was raised into the Dutch nobility as Baron Baud. He published numerous reports, among them one on the Dutch West Indies (Surinama), but his attempts to improve the dilapidated state of Surinam did not have the desired success.
=> Several members of the noble Grisons family von Salis/de Salis, originally from Soglio (Val Bregaglia), were oriented towards Holland, the Cape Colony and the Dutch East Indies. Contacts with Holland were established through numerous officers serving in the Regiment Capol (later Regiment Zwitzers), which was for a time owned and commanded by colonel Rudolf Anton des H.R.Rijksridder von Salis (1688–1745), who started off as a captain of a Swiss company of soldiers in the regiment of Christoffel Schmid von Grüneck from Ilanz (Canton of Graubunden). He then became the founding father of the Dutch branch of the von/de Salis family. One Johann Baptist von Salis(1731–1797) was a Major General in Dutch services. Concerning their role in the East Indies, the following family members are to be mentioned.
=> Rudolph Antony Baron de Salis (1761-1851), grandchild of Rudolf Anton, started his military career as a cadet in the regiment of his father, Jean Baptiste des H.R. Rijksridder de Salis (1721-1803). In 1778, he became a subaltern merchant at the service of the VOC in Batavia, mayor of the city of Breda in 1784, political councillor (number two behind the governor) at the Cape in 1802, where he got married in 1804. He was elevated to the Dutch nobility as a «Jonkheer».
=> His brother Adriaan Maurits Theodorus de Salis (1788-1834) was born in Breda (Holland). Shortly after the arrival of his father at the Cape, he left for Java with recommendation to Governor General Albertus Henricus Wiese. In 1804, he was appointed clerk to the secretariat of the governor of the police at the Cape of Good Hope. In Java, he became the first commander at the office of secretary-general Hendrik Veeckens, and he was then particularly distinguished by Marshal Herman Willem Daendels, who appointed him his private secretary and commissioner of expenditures. In 1811, he was mayor of the Greater Batavian Area («Ommelanden»), in 1812 bailiff over the region of Batavia and magistrate at Samarang, in 1813 member of the court of justice and neighbouring judge at Samarang. It was only the conquest of Java by the English that stopped his further career. When the Dutch gained the upper hand again, he was commissioned Deputy Resident of Soerabaja in 1817 and soon after also Resident at the courts of Suakarta and Djocjakarta. In 1821, he became a member of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences. In 1822, he was appointed resident of Surakarta, and in 1825, resident of Kadoe. When the Java War started, he was on leave in the Netherlands and returned to Kadoe only in 1826, where the rebellion was raging, too. He was a member of the committee appointed by Royal Decree in 1828 with the task to indicate the means to subdue the revolt in Java. This refers to the so-called Java War or Diponegoro War, fought in central Java from 1825–1830 at the cost of some 200,000 native and 8000 European lives. The war started when Prince Diponegoro (born Bendara Raden Mas Mustahar, later Bendara Raden Mas Antawirya) 1785–1855) opposed Dutch colonial rule on his estate. In 1830, Adriaan Maurits Theodorus de Salis was provisionally put in charge of the functions of the Resident of Surabaya. Because his opinions on how to deal with the local princes differed from those of the authorities in the East Indies, he resigned his post and returned to Holland. King Willem I appointed him member of the Council of the Indies, the central institution of Dutch colonial policies in Asia, and sent him back to Java, where he was of important service to Governor Johannesvan den Bosch until his death.
=> Jean-Baptiste Baron de Salis (1784-1838) was born in Batavia harbour onboard the VOC vessel «De Meerenberg». He started his military career in the fleet of Prince Willem V near the Isle of Wight. Until 1815, he held various military and civil service posts, and in 1816, he set off to Java, where he was received by Governor-General Godert van de Capellen. He was made inspector and adjoint director of Forestry and Timber. In 1821, he was Inspector of Samarang, and during the so-called Java War or Diponegoro War, fought in central Java from 1825–1830 at the cost of some 200,000 native and 8000 European lives, he was in the field several times. He was made Assistant Resident in Banjoewangi, and the «Javasche Courant» of 1828 records him a Resident in Rembang, where he ended his career. He had a reputation as a fearless hunter and was called «Toewan Matjan» (Tiger Man Lord) by the natives.
=> The Stürler family, originally from Berne, established numerous relations with the Dutch empire and the East Indies. In 1632, one E.J.C. de Sturler was co-author of a book called «Aan de leden van de Bataviasche landbouw-vereeniging» (to the members of the Batavian Agricultural Association). Vincent Stürler (1662-1734) from Berne was an officer at the service of the Dutch and raised to the peerage in Holland. He died in Berne. Bernhard Stürler (1725–1783) was lieutenant captain in Dutch services in the Regiment Graffenried. His son Albrecht Stürler (1769–1804) was an officer in Dutch services in the Regiment May. He died in Batavia. Johann Wilhelm Stürler (1773–1855) was a Dutch artillery officer, envoy of the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, and a landowner on Java. From 1823–1826, he was director of Dejima, Dutch trading post and centre of prostitution at Nagasaki, Japan. In 1835, he returned to the East, where 1835–1839 he was a member of the General Court in Batavia. At the same time, he operated some sugar factories on Java. His son Jacques Eduard de Sturler (1800-1840) was secretary of Pekalongan 1828–1830 and appointed resident of Banjumas in 1830. In 1835, together with an English sugar and indigo entrepreneur, he acquired the Poegoe sugar factory. In 1840, he published his book «Reizen uit Oost Indie naar Europa in Engeland, Nederland, Duitschland, Frankrijk en Zwitserland gedaan in 1836». Willem Louis de Sturler (1802-1879) was bearer of the King William decoration 4th Class, retired major in the Dutch East Indian Army, knight of the order of the Dutch Lion, holder of the medal for the war on Java of 1825–30, senior employee and investor in «Cultuurmaatschappij Tandjong-Pinang», a coffee plantation on the island of Bintan (one of the Riau Islands in the Malay Archipelago). He published extensively on tropical economy, social, historical and political conditions in the East Indies (Sumatra, Palembang region, Java). In 1822, one «Captain (de) Sturler/Stürler» was praised for his expedition to the west coast of Sumatra and his attack on Oedjong- Radja. In 1832, «Captain Stürler» with his company took part in the arrest of the ruler of the Minankabau people in West Sumatra in the context of a local rebellion against the Dutch.Also, his attack on Bonjol in West Sumatra was mentioned. Wilhelm Peter Stürler (1788–1824) was a merchant in Holland and Batavia. Karl August Stürler (1814–1882) was a Hussar officer in Dutch services on Java and commander of Surabaya. In 1858 he married Amarantia Louise de Rooy. The couple had two children: Elisabeth Maria Stürler (born 1866 in Surabaya) and Alfons Eduard Ludwig Stürler (born 1867 in Surabaya). The latter became a civil servant with the national railway company. In 1857, an advertisement for Sturler & Co. in «De Oostpost» offered Gruyère cheese, Swiss absinthe from the company of Edouard Pernod (Couvet in the Val de Travers), Italian pasta, beverages, confectionery and sugar confectionery. Johann Wilhelm Eduard Stürler (1828–1890), son of Jacques Eduard de Sturler (1800-1840), was born in Batavia and died in Cannes. He entered the services of a sugar factory in Besito (near Kudu on Java) in 1860, and became co-owner the same year. This allowed him to make fortune and to acquire the Tijomas estate on Java in 1867 for 1.4 million guilders. He became one of the most powerful men around Buitenzorg and was raised to the Dutch peerage in 1884. In 1887, a work conflict on Tijomas was resolved with force and left about fifty native workers dead and many wounded. In 1854, he had married Friederike Johanna Dinger. The couple had many children, among them: Jakob Eduard Stürler (born 1855 in Tajoe), Consul-General in Bangkok and Dutch envoy in Athens, and Alfons Ludwig Stürler (born 1856 in Tajoe), a farmer. Eduard Jakob Ludwig Stürler (1830–1868) was a lawyer who died in Surabaya. Klemens Bernhard Friedrich Stürler (born 1801) was a lieutenant in the service of the Dutch, then captain in the service of the VOC and military governor on Sumatra. Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Stürler (1834–1877) died in Besito, Koedoes/Kudu. He was a civil servant for financial affairs on Java, a planter and director of a sugar refinery in Besito. Alfons Stürler (1872–1940) was born in Besito and was a planter on Java.
=> Johann Wilhelm Eduard Stürler (1828–1890), son of Jacques Eduard de Sturler (1800-1840), was born in Batavia and died in Cannes. He entered the services of a sugar factory in Besito (near Kudu on Java) in 1860, and became co-owner the same year. This allowed him to make a fortune and to acquire the 17,800 acres Tijomas estate on Java (today Ciomas) in 1867 for 1.4 million guilders. He administered the estate together with his son Pol and his son-in-law Paddy. In the villages of the estate lived about 15,000 Soendanezen (indigenous people), whose contracts were renewed by Sturler in 1869, stating that the peasants had to deliver 20% of the harvest, had to grow coffee on their land, had to deliver the coffee harvest at a price fixed by Sturler, and had to work five consecutive days every five weeks on the owner’s coffee plantations in the mountains. Anyone failing to abide by the contract could be punished by having his plot of land sold. Sturler became one of the most powerful men around Buitenzorg and was raised to the Dutch peerage in 1884. In 1887, a work conflict on Tijomas was resolved with force by KNIL soliders from Batavia and the Buitenzorg police, leaving about fifty native workers dead and many more wounded. In 1888 son-in-law Paddywas made a member of the «Algemene Rekenkamer van Nederlansch Oost-Indië».
=> Gottlieb von Wattenwyl (1723–1778) from Berne was an officer in the service of the French. He died in Batavia.
=> Louis Relian (1725–1778) from Geneva was a surgeon. In 1760, he mnarried Katharina Magdalena Verbeek (born in the Cape Colony), and he died in Batavia.
=> Emil Karl Ludwig von Muralt (1803–1828) from Berne was an officer in the service of the French and the Dutch. He died in action in Batavia.
=> Jean-Lucien de Salis Meyenfeld (1809–1840) started his military career as a 2nd lieutenant in the «Regiment Zwitzers» under General Jakob Sprecher von Bernegg. When his unit was disbanded, he joined the Dutch army and was garrisoned in Antwerp until 1830. In 1834, he returned from service in Naples to Holland and left as a subaltern officer for the East, where, because of his zeal for service, he was soon reinstated as an officer. He took part in the second «Bali Expedition» and was knighted with the «Willem Military Order 4th class» for his conduct. In 1840, when he wanted to go on leave because of his weak health, he died unexpectedly in the hospital in Batavia. He had already attained the rank of captain.
=> Justus Cornelis Zubli (1830-1867) from a St.Gallen family, great-grandson of Paulus Zübli, plantation owner in Berbice, and grandson of Abraham Zubli in Demerara (1760–1812), got married in Java, serving in the Dutch military as captain-quartermaster of the East Indian Army. He died in Batavia. His brother Nicolaas Ambrosius Zubli (1844–1865) died of a disease in Oenarang, Central Java. Paulus Zübli’s great-great-granddaughter Hendrika Elize Zubli (1863-1916) got married in the Javanese coastal town of Semerang to Louis Marcal, first luitenant of the KNIL (Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger).
3.6 Egypt
=> Jacques Ambrosius von Planta (1826–1901) from Samedan in the upper Engadine valley was a Swiss cotton entrepreneur. The von Planta family in Samedan had already acquired part of their wealth from the 18th century Pool family plantation and slavery complex in the Dutch colony of Berbice. In 1853, Jacques Ambrosius founded – together with his cousin Peter von Planta (1829–1910) – a cotton trading company in Alexandria (Egypt) and in 1867 one in Liverpool. The Manchester branch of J. Planta and Co. was established in 1911, and the Swiss community of cotton magnates (von Planta, Reinhardt, Cooper, and Burckhardt) and some more 700 Swiss citizens was present in Alexandria as late as the 1930s. In the 1860s, the Civil War in America and the abolition of slavery in 1865 had led to an expansion of cotton agriculture in Egypt, which had been a traditional slaving society and a centre of the slave-trade since the 16th century. In the context of integration into the world market under Muhammad Ali (1769–1849), Egypt became a country with a massive non-domestic slavery, above all on the large sugar plantations of Upper Egypt and the cotton plantations of Lower Egypt, which made up 40% of all arable land in the 1860s. Peter returned to Switzerland and settled in Fürstenau GR, where he was active as a model farmer, a pioneer of cooperative housing and as the founder of the first rural hospital of the canton. Jacques Ambrosius returned to Switzerland in 1867 and settled in Chur. The city’s Villa Planta (built 1874–75, today the Art Museum of the Grisons) and Villa Planta in St.Moritz (erected in 1883) testify to his activities as a builder and a patron.