In Golet, Robert Thayer poses in front of the house where his great-grandfather Jakob Liechti was born in 1858. His wife, his sister and his nephew travelled with him.
SWI swissinfo.ch / Céline Stegmüller
At the age of 53, Robert Thayer discovered his genes didn’t match his presumed family tree. Finding himself suddenly connected to the Liechti family, he travelled to Switzerland to visit the hamlets his ancestors had lived in before emigrating to the United States.
On a cloudy day in May, a small white car takes a right into Erlenbach im Simmental, a little village in the valley behind Spiez, canton Bern. Finding its way on the narrow streets through the houses, the car turns onto the single-lane country road that heads up the hill, closely followed by a second car. The scenery is picturesque: idyllic steep green meadows on both sides of the road, a stunning view over the valley, and little traffic that would otherwise require precise manoeuvring.
In the white car, Albert Liechti checks with his wife whether this is the way they’d taken the previous time. She confirms it is. Liechti, 82, is a passionate genealogist, and today, for the second time, he’s bringing some of his distant American relatives on an ancestry tour in canton Bern. In the second car, Robert Thayer, his wife, his sister Gloria and her son are slightly overwhelmed by all the twists and turns up the hill. This is a road only used by locals who know where they’re going.
The visitors gather around Albert Liechti (third from left), who informs them about how their stop connects with their family history.
SWI swissinfo.ch / Céline Stegmüller
The mystery of history
A twist of fate is what brought the American tourists here in the first place. In 2018, Robert found out he wasn’t a Thayer. When his sister gifted two of her brothers a DNA test, their results surprisingly linked them to the Leichty family (an Americanised spelling of the Swiss surname Liechti).
“It would seem that there had been an encounter between my grandmother and the farmer across the street. We grew up not knowing our father was the illegitimate child of this relationship. We don’t even think he knew,” Robert explains.
“The Leichty and the Thayers lived in adjacent farms. They lived very close to each other,” he adds – so close that Robert and his siblings didn’t know they were going to school with their cousins. “Good thing we didn’t date them,” Robert and Gloria laugh.
The unexpected revelation and the matches provided by his DNA test got Robert into genealogy research. “Both Elizabeth and Jacob Leichty Sr. were the common ancestors to myself and my closest DNA matches, and also my paternal great-grandparents,” says Robert. “What isn’t certain and may never be is which one of their sons living at the time of dad’s conception in 1926 was our biological grandfather: Jacob Robert Jr. or his brother Frederick Ernest”.
Jacob Liechti Sr (sitting on the left) and his wife Elizabeth (sitting on the right) pose with their six children, circa 1906. Standing in the middle is Jacob Robert Jr, next to his brother Frederick Ernest on the right.
Courtesy of Robert Thayer
Today Robert is a member of the Collin County Genealogical Society, of which he leads the special interest group “All things technology”, where he discusses how AI is helping to decode handwritten documents and the ethical concerns around this technology being used for genealogical research.
The research into his biological grandfather’s lineage in Switzerland is how Robert got to know Albert Liechti, his guide for the day. “About five years ago, I came across an article by AlbertExternal link published in the December 2018 newsletter of the Genealogical-Heraldic Society of Bern,” Robert says. “In that piece, he documented several generations of my ancestors, including my previously unknown fourth great-grandparents, Christen Liechti and Katharina (née Augsburger)”.
Through the article, he found Albert’s email address and got in touch with him, starting a fervent exchange of genealogical information. A couple of years later, the two decided to take a Y-DNA test, and discovered they have a common ancestor who lived in Landiswil, canton Bern, around 1530.
A Y-DNA test analyses the Y chromosome, which is passed down almost unchanged from father to son through the direct paternal line. Because only biological males carry a Y chromosome, females can’t take this test.
To trace the maternal line, both men and women can take a mtDNA test, which analyses mitochondrial DNA passed down virtually unchanged by the egg cell.
Nearly all mainstream commercial at-home kits use Autosomal DNA tests. This analyses genetical material inherited from both parents, grandparents etc, making it the best and most affordable way for finding relatives, from immediate family to 5th or 6th cousins.
A trip down history lane
For his 40th wedding anniversary, Robert and his wife decided to travel to Switzerland for the first time, to see the country where Jakob and Elizabeth Liechti lived before boarding a ship headed for New York in 1883. Albert naturally offered to take them on a small tour of the Bernese Ober- and Mittelland, to show them the houses where their ancestors lived, and the churches where they were christened and married.
Albert had already taken Robert’s cousin Siena on the same tour the year before. He meticulously researched the places of residence of some of their ancestors, chatted with the current owners about the possibility to stop by for a quick visit, and prepared a precise itinerary that would take the group up and down the Bernese hills, starting in Spiez – where Robert’s second great-grandparents got married in 1849 – and ending in Ätzlischwand, where four Liechti families lived between 1612 and 1715.
The group diligently follows Albert’s lead, who keeps a close eye on his watch to get back to the car in time to drive to the next location. Robert’s sister Gloria is fascinated by the old buildings, while her son documents their trip with his camera and they all marvel at the postcard scenery surrounding the small quiet hamlets.
“I feel like this is such a blessing,” says Robert emotionally. “I owe [Albert] so much for what he’s done, and I don’t know how to repay him. He’s like, ‘I don’t want repayment’ but I just feel like I owe him thousands of US dollars for this. Most people pay good money to have somebody take you on a tour of their homeland. I guess that’s the beauty of this passion for genealogy”.
At the final stop in Ätzlischwand, the group enjoys a little stroll with the farmers who now live where the Liechti family once had.
SWI swissinfo.ch / Céline Stegmüller
It’s just the beginning
At their last stop in Ätzlischwand, Elisabeth and Alfred Jegerlehner, the current owners of the house and farm Albert has brought the group to see, treat everyone to a small Zvieri, a traditional Swiss-German afternoon snack. Cured meat, Swiss cheese, and biscuits are passed around, while guests and hosts exchange a few anecdotes thanks to Albert’s translation from English to Swiss German and vice-versa.
Upon departure, they all embrace each other tightly, as if they’d known each other for years, and extend mutual invites for future visits. Robert is looking forward to translating all the voice memos he’s recorded throughout the day of Albert speaking Swiss German with people they met along the way. The two distant relatives say their goodbyes, knowing they’ll be keeping in touch to advance in their genealogical research.
Edited by Samuel Jaberg/gw
