Topic: Branches - Zweige

This interesting branch of the Family was started by Johannes Iseli, a Swiss mercenary working for the Dutch in colonial Indonesia. After WWII, most of his descendants left Indonesia during the difficult early day of independence. Most of family resettled in Holland, but a few immigrated to America in the 1950's.

We have now connected this branch to the T?uffelen branch. There is also an Esely spelling in the Wynigen branch, but there appears to be no direct connection with this branch.

This branch of the Family is derived from Jacob Iseli (1860-?), who immigrated from Switzerland in the 1890's and settled in the Washington DC area.

This branch is essentially the story of Christian H. Isely and his wife, Elise Dubach.

This branch of the Family can be traced back to Peter Iseli (1784-1848), the son of Hans Iseli and Christina Locher. Peter married Verena Kunz of L?tzelfl?h in 1803 and had three children, Christian, Johannes, and Katherine. Christian (1806-?) immigrated to America in 1833 and settled in Switzer Township, Monroe County, Ohio.

The largest American branch of the Iseli Family, the origins of this group has been traced back to Hans Iseli born sometime around 1520. His three sons became half of the "founding" fathers of the Iseli von Hasle. Hans' son Benedict moved to L?tzelfl?h around 1570 where some of his children became the "founding" Iseli family in that village. Later, Niklaus Iseli moved to the hamlet of Thal, just a few miles away from L?tzelfl?h, around 1690 after marrying a local girl. Niklaus' fifth child, also named Niklaus, returned to L?tzelfl?h where Christian was born. Christian's sons were born in a number of different Swiss villages, including Wynigen.

Our knowledge of the Iseli Family in Switzerland is ultimately limited by the availablity of records. Bern was established in 1191 and the City begain its territorial expansion in the 14th Century. No systematic records were in these early years, and the first known mention of a Family member is Konrad Iseli in 1348 as the Burger of Burgdorf. By the 1500's, local churches were keeping systematic records of baptisms, marriages and deaths. In the 1800's, civil systems of records keeping were being introduced and were uniformily standardized throughout Switzerland. Thus, direct genealogical research will probably be limited to the 16th Century. Athough there probably will never be any direct proof that all the Swiss Family Branches are related, it does not deminish the possiblity that they are.

Since the creation of this site in December of 1995, new information, that has greatly extended our knowledge of the Family worldwide, has continuously been arriving. The Swiss Iseli's family members have been steadily emigrating since the 1700's. These emigrations seem to be mostly independent of each other. For organizational purposes, this site will consider each emigration episode a "branch" of the Family. We have tentatively catagorized each known branch into the following groups.