As a young boy I loved transcribing my grandfathers handwritten notesabout our family history. It was my way of owning our heritage.
That fascination has never waned and I am the fortunate successor ofgenerations of individuals from our family who have been intrigued byour heritage.
Despite the mine of information handed down over time, the origin ofour family name of Jeanneret has remained a mystery. The anecdotalstory being that our forebears were Huguenots who fled France orSwitzerland. Somewhere a small detail was inserted that they hadtravelled to England via the Channel Islands. To this day I have notfound any evidence of that journey. Until recently our Jeanneret familybegan with Lewis Francis James Jeanneret (1772-1848) who lived andworked in London. He married, and his children were baptised at aHuguenot church.
Earlier research located a number of individuals bearing the Jeanneretname and living in England but there was no obvious connection. Theywere professionals and I made the mistake of assuming that a humbleironmonger like Lewis was unlikely to be related to people with loftierprofessions, such as solicitors.
After discovering from DNA testing there were Jeanneret relatives inAmerica it became evident that Lewis Francis James Jeanneret was theyounger brother of the solicitors I had previously discounted.
The final piece in the jigsaw was the discovery of the Last Will andTestament of Elizabeth Jeanneret, mother of Lewis, in which shedetailed her sons and their occupations. From there it was easy toestablish the family and their roots in Switzerland.
As a side project I am undertaking a ‘One Name Study’ in an attemptto capture every Jeanneret that has existed. So far there are over 6,500individuals in my database and it has enabled me to establish a verysmall number of families that are the progenitors of all of us bearingthe Jeanneret name.