Some research happens at a desk, among records and registers. And some of it happens on foot. In June 2026, Elsbeth Aebersold of our museum team – through many years of dedicated interest a true specialist in the Anabaptist history of the Simmental, the Emmental and Thun – spent half a day with a visitor from overseas: a descendant of the Reusser and Brenneman families, two of the best-known Anabaptist families of the Thun region.

Together they walked in the footsteps of her ancestors. These are the families whose story we recently traced in this series: Christina Reusser, probably a daughter of Steffan Reusser of Steffisburg, married Melchior Brenneman – the man imprisoned at Thun in 1659 for his Anabaptist faith, whose family later went into exile and whose descendants became one of the great Mennonite lineages of North America.

To stand in these places with a descendant, more than three and a half centuries later, is a moving experience – for our guests, and every time anew for us. It is also what this project is about: the history in our archives is not abstract. It belongs to families who carry it on, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Would you like to walk this trail yourself?

If your family tree leads back to the region of Thun, the Simmental or the Emmental, we are glad to help – with answers from the archives and with guided visits to the places themselves. Ask the archives, or book the tour «From the Castle Tower to the New World». Extended half-day programmes, like the one described here, are possible on request.