Bern Canton, Switzerland Genealogy

Guide to Bern canton ancestry, family history and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, parish registers, and military records.

History
Bern is a German-speaking canton. It joined the Swiss Confederation in 1353 and has 410 communities. It has always been the most populated canton in Switzerland.

Getting started with Switzerland - Bern research
Bern parish church records have been digitized online, so you can access the records from home. The parish pages lists all of Bern parish. Some of the parish wiki pages have direct links to the church volumes, otherwise you must go to the landing pages for each parish to locate volumes

Research Tools
Place name list

See the page Switzerland Bern Gazetteers for a list of municipalities (civil communities) and corresponding parishes in Canton Bern.

Various Resources

See "Swiss Genealogy on the Internet" for links to various resources and indexes. To access information in English about Canton Bern, click on "Information on individual Cantons", then "Bern" under the British flag. The page includes general information about the canton, archive addresses, and list of genealogical resources.

Online Records
 * 1792-1876 - at FamilySearch — index and images

A wiki article describing an online collection is found at:

Switzerland, Canton Bern Civil Registration (FamilySearch Historical Records)