Cowbells and Chocolate

The fact that I blog about my Swiss experiences and the quirkiness of Switzerland leads me quite often to talk about the language differences. Of course I find that interesting, otherwise I wouldn’t write about it. I’m always pleased to find out that people who I don’t even know, have read a post or two. So it’s possible that other people find what I write interesting. Maybe that’s not really a big deal, but I think it is.

And so it happens that someone in America had a great-great grandfather (actually it was his wife’s great-great grandfather) who had immigrated to the States from (drum roll, please) Switzerland! This American, I’ll call him B-, was in possession of some documents that had gotten handed down through the family. They were pretty sure that they pertained to the Civil War but they couldn’t read the letters because they were written in Swiss. No one in their family, since their great-great grandfather spoke the language fluently let alone was able to read it. They hadn’t gotten much help from Civil War foundations in America who had hinted at help in exchange for a donation of the documents. B- and his family clearly weren’t ready to take that step. Family heirlooms are tough to part with.

Connecting back to Switzerland

This is all well and good, but what has it got to do with me? Well, B- thought maybe there was a foundation or society in Switzerland that could help them translate the material. So he went off and googled the words translation, Switzerland and who knows what other words along with them. Now comes the really cool part, somewhere in the hit-list Cowbells and Chocolate showed up. My Cowbells and Chocolate!

Probably out of despair, because I can’t imagine that any of my posts would even come close to answering B’s questions, he read a bit of what I had to say. He thought I wrote passionately about the language and Switzerland. And, I suppose the idea of writing to Swiss agencies seemed a bit daunting to him. Then he thought that I might be able to point him in the right direction with his search. With nothing to lose he wrote me. Actually he posted a comment. But I have my site set up so that comments have to be okayed by me before they are made public so it came to me. When I saw the comment explaining what he had and what he wanted I thought ’my, oh my, this is interesting’.

Whetting Our Appetite

If you are looking for a translator, particularly if you have Swiss documents, Switzerland is a good place to start. Swiss love languages and there are lots of genealogical societies and clubs, too. At any rate, I thought it might be good if we knew what kind of material we were dealing with before we went looking for some help. B- had written he had letters written in Swiss and some kind of diary about the war written in English but with some Swiss thrown in. I took that at face value ‘he had documents written in Swiss’. Silly me, for some reason I thought because these were more informal writings they could very well be written in dialect. We asked B- to send us a digital copy of something he had. When we got a copy I had one of those slap on the forehead moments; of course it’s going to be in High German, that was the written language. At that time you didn’t write in dialect. So there would be no 19^th century Zurich dialect for anyone to wade through. And to top it off it was written in the most beautiful, legible German Cursive Script you could imagine. Pristine. This was exciting!

We thought this would be so cool if B- allowed us to transcribe and translate for him and his family. This was about a Swiss who went to America, now if there is something I can relate to, it’s that, in reverse, of course. There’s almost 125 years difference in the departure date, but hey, who’s counting? However what B- didn’t know was that Ben and I had by then had extensive experience in researching Ben’s ancestors in Switzerland and Germany. How could he? That’s something that I had only touched on once in my posts (up to then). However, since 1992, often for long stretches of time (years) and very intensely, we had gone through many German church books and transcribed many documents. We weren’t experts but very proficient. The added bonus that B- said he had a diary pertaining to the American Civil War really piqued our interest.

My Knowledge of the Civil War

All I really knew ‘first hand’ sort of, about the Civil War was that my mother never called it that. For her it was always, always ‘The War Between the States’. She would even get a little teary eyed when she heard the song ‘Dixie’s Land’. You didn’t have to look far to see where she got that. Her mother’s side of the family were southerners through and through. Right down to belonging to the ‘Daughters of the Confederacy’. Her mother had done some genealogical research about her family and wrote a ‘book’ of sorts. The book documented a lot of lives that dated back to the settlement days and was a birthday present for her mother (who was born shortly after the war had ended). She wrote a lot of tongue in cheek comments about the Civil War and it was crystal clear where her sympathies were cast. It wasn’t something my mother dwelled on or even brought up, but being a southerner it was a part of her upbringing. I never spoke to my grandmother about her thoughts on the war. I wish I had for it was certainly a missed opportunity.

Back to the correspondence with B-. Up to then he had only used the terminology ‘Civil War’ and I knew that no real Southerner would say something like that. I did some sharp deducing and figured that B’s ancestors probably had fought on the Union side. Then again, technically I’m a southerner but because I wasn’t raised in the south I would never call the Civil War the War Between the States. Go figure. Add to that the fact that Missouri, that state where B’s ancestor lived, was a hotly contested border state. So it could go either way. At any rate I thought it would be extraordinary to hear what an eyewitness from either side had to say.

We Want to do this Project

Ben and I felt this project was cut out for us. It had our names written all over it. It was in our wheelhouse. Whatever idiom you want to use, we would be the perfect match. We had the knowledge of the German cursive script along with the language, so we could transcribe and translate his documents. We knew about the Swiss culture and the American, so we could add comments about that when appropriate. And Ben and I are both interested in history, although the American Civil War isn’t our strong point we are very willing to learn. And what was really neat, we had the time. It just felt right. We wanted to be a part of this project. Please don’t pick an official agency, pick us!

I felt a little like the donkey in the movie Shrek: jumping up and down with an outstretched arm – Pick me! Pick me! Me! Me!

Spoiler alert: we get the good to go. More to come…