Family history

For many years I’ve been aware that I’m descended from a Swiss soldier (or “mercenary,” as family tradition has it) who arrived in the American colonies before the revolution.

I knew, too, that I had an ancestor named Henry Wisner who was a member of the First and Second Continental Congresses, and who missed signing the Declaration of Independence for reasons not entirely clear. On a trip to Washington when I was in high school, I went into the lobby of the National Archives and was thrilled to look inside a glass case and see his signature on a document called the Articles of Association.

My father recently gave me a book called The Wisners in America: A Family of Patriots and Pioneers, by G. Franklin Wisner. Published in 1918, it has a heavy green binding, softened with age, and an ornamentally embossed title in faded gilt. There are many fold-out pages of genealogical charts in the back, on smooth brittle paper that has to be handled carefully. One of them traces the line from Johannes Weesner (the original Swiss soldier) to my paternal grandfather.

I had seen the book many times but had never felt the impulse to delve into it. I hadn’t gotten much farther than the Wisner coat of arms, which also appears at wisner.com, the website of a manufacturer of antique-looking view cameras. The motto is Amore nonvi, which my father used to say meant “Nobody loves Violet.” (It’s just possible that this is incorrect.)