Canada
Neuchâtel emigrants to Canada
Abram Perret (b. La Sagne, 1 April 1779), his wife Marianne Bourquin and their 3 oldest children Fanny, Sophie and Charles formed part of the group of Swiss settlers recruited in 1821 to join Lord Selkirk’s Red River colony (today known as Winnipeg) in Manitoba. Disastrous floods forced the family to abandon the colony in 1826 and take refuge along with other ex-colonists at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Their presence on the army reservation was tolerated for over a decade, giving Abram time to build a considerable livestock herd, but in 1840 they were forcibly evicted without compensation and pushed eastward to what became downtown St. Paul. Abram’s name was anglicised to Abraham Perry; a park in Arden Hills, Minnesota is named after his son Charles. Abram’s parents were Abram Perret and Judith Marie Tissot; his great-grandfather - another Abram - was a local councillor in La Sagne in the early 1700s. One of his nephews, Charles-Gustave Perret, emigrated to Brazil prior to 1840.
Louis-Alfred Jeanneret (b. Les Ponts-de-Martel, 7 November 1859), a watchmaker, emigrated to Canada in about 1877. His parents were Frédéric-Sylvain Jeanneret and Eugénie Dumont; his Jeanneret ancestors go back to Claude Jeanneret who was recorded as a kind of local magistrate in Travers in 1611.
Jules-Arthur Perret (b. La Sagne, 19 September 1852) emigrated to Saskatchewan in the 1890s. His parents, Philibert and Mélanie, were distant cousins from two different branches of the Perret family. Jules-Arthur’s Perret ancestors include a mayor of La Sagne and at least one line goes back to about 1650.
Bern emigrants to Canada
Paul Victor von Allmen (b. Interlaken, 1893) was the son of son of Friedrich von Allmen and Elisabeth Schurch. When Friedrich died, Elizabeth went to England to work for the Parker family, and Paul joined her there at the age of 15. He worked for Lord and Lady Drummond, and accompanied them to Canada in 1910. Following the outbreak of WW1, he joined the army in 1915 under the surname Allmen (possibly because von Allmen sounded too germanic) and later changed this to d'Allmen.
Paul’s brother Werner G von Allmen (b. Beatenberg, 1895) came to Canada after Paul, and also worked for the Drummond family. He settled in Montreal, having previously lived in Geneva, Switzerland. His descendants use the name Allmen.
Please contact us for further details of any of these families or if you have information to share.