Daring to start afresh on the other side of the Atlantic – emigration is part of the history of many families in Switzerland and the US. Years ago, the freshly-arrived Swiss didn’t just find a new life – often they found a new name. The Tschudi family became the Tshudy family, Gnägi morphed into Kornegay, and the Künzlis became the Kinsaws or Kinseys. According to estimates, around 460,000 Swiss emigrated to the US between 1700 and 2000. The very first Swiss-Americans The first Swiss known to have travelled to what would later become the United States did not survive long in the New World. In 1564, Diebold von Erlach was an officer on a French colonial expedition to what is now Florida. There, von Erlach intervened in conflicts between rival indigenous tribes. In 1565, he died in unexplained circumstances in a fight between Spanish and French colonisers. Like von Erlach, the first Swiss-Americans were often in French or British pay as soldiers, settlers or labourers. But many ...
