I the Vauchers watchmakers orginating from Fleurier
The Vaucher families, who were deeply involved in the introduction and development of the small-scale watch industry in Fleurier, that is to say in the manufacture of pocket watches as opposed to clocks, little by little deliver up to us the forgotten details of their traditions, their know-how and their everyday life. At the time of the 1750 census, there were 28 Vaucher families in Fleurier. Although they shared a common ancestor, these families do not regard themselves as closely related, and mark the difference between them by adding a marriage or place name as in "Vaucher sur-les-Moulins", "Vaucher du Guilleri", "Vaucher-de-la-Croix" or"Vaucher-Ferrier".
Watches engraved with the Vaucher signature and bearing witness to the presence of Vaucher watchmakers in Fleurier, Geneva, London and Paris as from the XVIII century occasionally crop up in museum or private collections during auctions.
Complication watches, automats, richly-decorated cases especially made for aristocratic customers and, subsequently, watches for the Chinese market, all have the origin of the artists who created them in common.
II David-Jean-Jacques-Henri Vaucher known as Vaucher du Guilleri (1712-1786) first watchmaker in Fleurier
David-Jean-Jacques-Henri Vaucher is reputed, in 1730, to have been the first watchmaker in Fleurier.
An official deed of 1732 makes mention of a Jean Jacques Vaucher Watchmaker mentioned as witness with his brother, Daniel-Henri, an architect. There is no trace of the Master of David-Jean-Jacques-Henri; could it have been Daniel Jeanrichard or one of his pupils as is often mentioned? We have no idea but the second assumption seems plausible.
Between 1730 and the end of the XVIII century, watchmaking spread rapidly in the Neuchâtel Mountains. David Jean-Jacques-Henri Vaucher trained Jonas DuPasquier who, in turn, was to train Claude-Jean-Jacques Jequier.
A few years later, several young people came from the Vaud Region and the Vallée de Joux to enter apprenticeship in Fleurier in order to escape the all-too-restrictive rules imposed in their native regions by the craft guilds. So it was that the development of the watch industry in the Vallée de Joux since 1740 results directly from Fleurier becoming an important watchmaking centre around the middle of the XVIII century.
The family of David-Jean-Jacques Henri Vaucher is well-known thanks to a diary fortuitously discovered about thirty years ago during a wastepaper collection in Fleurier and which had been written by his father, Daniel Vaucher, acarpenter.
As was the case with many craftsmen from the Val-de-Travers who were working in the building trade, and probably as his father was already a carpenter, Daniel Vaucher, born in 1666, spent long periods away from home. He was involved in the construction of many buildings throughout the Vaud Region, right down to the shores of Lake Geneva.
This explains why David-Jean-Jacques-Henri was baptized in Vuillerens on 9 April 1713, which would lead us to believe that all the family was involved in these seasonal migrations.
In 1740, Daniel Vaucher, a farmer and stockbreeder in Fleurier, a carpenter and the owner of mills in Buttes with his brother-in-law, Abraham DuPasquier, and at Romainmôtier, bought the citizenship of Neuchâtel for himself and his children.
The year his son was born, Daniel Vaucher built the family house in Fleurier at a place called Guilleri, his initials, FD, as well as the date, 1712,are still visible on the door lintel. This branch of the Vaucher family of Fleurier was thereafter to be named Vaucher du Guilleri.
The bonds between the Vaucher du Guilleri family and the Vaud District were to continue with the following generation. Daniel-Henri, the elder son of Daniel, became an architect for LLEE of Bern, and was involved in the construction of many public buildings. David-Jean-Jacques-Henri’s first wife was Anne-Marie Croisier known as "Nanest", who probably originated from the area of Bière or Morges.
III Watchmaking in Fleurier in the second half of the XVIII century/ the first Vaucher frères company
The Neuchâtel population census conducted in 1750, entitled "Enumeration of the people, the poor, and the others", informs us that Fleurier at that time had 459 inhabitants, of whom 103 were called Vaucher.
The majority of the active people were involved in agriculture and building, and the craft industries catered to the immediate needs of the community, such as tailors, hatters, blacksmiths or cobblers.
There were already 15 people plying the cottage trade of clock and watchmaker in addition to agriculture and stock breeding.
David-Jean-Jacques-Henri Vaucher, who was reputed to excel in this art, was a complete watchmaker, manufacturing all the parts of the watch himself.
It was under his influence and thanks to the people whom he initiated that the watch industry developed in Fleurier as from the mid- XVIII century.
David-Jean-Jacques-Henri Vaucher had five sons, the eldest, Isaac-Henri, already mentioned as a watch maker, died at the age of 20. Three of his other sons: Claude-Jean-Pierre, Jean-Jacques-Henri and Henry-Louis were to continue the family business by creating their company, Vaucher Frères, towards the end of the XVIII century.
Vaucher Frères were manufacturers and traders. They produced watches of beautiful quality, often with complications, as well as travelling clocks.
In Fleurier, watchmaking continued to progress, involving 131 people in 1790.
To meet the considerable demand and to rationalise production, individual craftsmen specialised in the manufacture of the various parts of the watch. Assemblers and traders assembled and sold them.
Applications for passports in the names of the Vaucher brothers indicate to us that this market covered almost all of Europe and that each one of them dealt with a precise area - Germany, Italy, France.
Their success was total as the Fleurier Town Clerk in 1856 declared that "they have reached a position of undoubtedly rare fortune such as is given to few people to attain".
The Vaucher du Guilleri, over the generations, married members of the DuPasquier family, the founders of the Fabrique-Neuve producing Cortaillod painted fabrics consideredone of the major European companies of its time in this industry.
These renewed family ties undoubtedly furthered the commercial rise of the watch making company.
Unlike his brothers, David-Jean-Jacques-Henri, Vaucher’s fifth son, Charles-Daniel, born in 1760, did not become a watch maker but a priest in St-Aubin and then in Lignières of which he conducted an historical study still known today. He spent his last years in Fleurier.
IV Daniel Vaucher of Fleurier, master watchmaker in Paris under the name of Vaucher in the City
Daniel Vaucher, born in 1716, son of François, comes from another Vaucher family, of which the members are distinguished more particularly in administration and finance.
His father, a church elder and administrator of justice, exercised the function of collector for Neuchâtel families with assets in the Val-de-Travers.One of his brothers, Pierre-François, was a notary (solicitor) and administrator of justice; whereas the other, Jean-Jacques, combined the functions of governor, administrator of justice and elder. He, in 1748, was to have a son, Jean-Jacques-François Vaucher, known as Vaucher-le-Riche because of the immense fortune he made in the printed calico trade of the Cortaillod Fabrique-Neuve.
However, in circumstances which are none too clear, and involving a matter of counterfeit banknotes, Daniel Vaucher, captain and administrator of justice, had to leave Fleurier for Paris in 1760, leaving his wife and six children behind.
In the archives of his country of origin, he is mentioned as a terrinier, that is to say a manufacturer of earthenware stoves, but he popped up in Paris in 1767, as a master watchmaker, residing in Rue de Pré-aux-Boeufs, where he became a highly esteemed craftsman.
In Paris, Daniel Vaucher probably had contacts with Ferdinand Berthoud and other expatriates from Val-de-Travers. Might it have been thanks to them that he became a watchmaker?
He and his children, Jonas-Frederic, Jean-Henri-David, François, Jean-Jacques and Samuel, who went to join him, produced some splendid watches under the Vaucher in the City name.
His elder daughter, Isabelle-Salome, was also a watchmaker.
Seven of their watches are still preserved in the Louvre, and others in several museums around Europe.
As Daniel Vaucher worked for wealthy aristocratic customers, he was also involved in the famous business of the Queen’s necklace.
The date of his death is unknown, but his sons continued the family business in the same the style as Frères Vaucher and they had serious difficulties at the time of the Revolution.
Jean-Henri-David returned to Switzerland around 1792, where he married a young lady called Bovet d'Areuse and died a little later.
We know, from a very touching letter, that Samuel and François were still in Paris in the City in 1826. Having been reduced to poverty and being almost blind, they lived on the pension they received from their cousins Dubois, Bovet and Vaucher who had remained in Switzerland.
V The Vaucher known as clercs alias Vaucher architects in Geneva
Before watch making came into its own, the people of the Val-de-Travers did seasonal work as stone cutters, carpenters or masons on the Swiss Lowlands. People from Fleurier who were to be found in Geneva, almost all worked in the building trade. Some had settled permanently in this city and some became recognised architects.
That was the case of Jean-Jacques-Frederic Vaucher-Ferrier, born in 1766 in Fleurier, who was accepted as an inhabitant of Geneva in 1785 in the capacity of mason. The Municipality of Fleurier called upon him and another Fleurier exile from Geneva, Pierre-Louis Lequin, to enlarge the temple planned in 1822. The façade plans of this project remain to this day, preserved at the Val-de-Travers Museum.
Curiously, these drawings carry the signature of Vaucher-Strubing, a well-known enamel painter and first cousin of Jean Jacques-Frederic.
Samuel Vaucher, nephew of Jean Jacques-Frederic, born in 1798,was the designer of many significant buildings among which the Rath Museum in Geneva and several public buildings in Marseilles, whereas his first cousin, François-Ulrich Vaucher, planned most of the Bergues district.
All are descendants of Balthasar Vaucher known as Clerc alias Vaucher
The Vaucher families of Geneva kept close links with Fleurier. It was not rare that their children took their first communion there, often at Christmas, two brothers and sisters together. Likewise, Jean-Jacques Vaucher, a stone mason living in Geneva, and his wife, Charlotte Fatton, are mentioned as godfather and godmother to three children in Les Verrières and in Môtiers between 1775 and 1778.
VI The Watchmaking Vaucher in Geneva
In 1724, Daniel Vaucher of Fleurier, son of Antoine, and a mason by trade, was accepted as an inhabitant of Geneva. He had already been living there since 1719 and had 12 children. In 1748 and 1754 respectively, his sons, Daniel and Pierre-François, both watchmakers, were also accepted as inhabitants. It is known that they served their apprenticeship in Geneva. A third son, Abraham, was accepted in 1757; he was an enamel painter and master jeweller, whereas one of his daughters, Jeanne-Marguerite, married Jean-Jacques Jequier, a well-known watchmaker in Fleurier.
Was it Daniel and Pierre-François who founded the house of Vaucher Frères in Geneva to which are attributed, among other items of very good quality, the fantasy watches known as "arm in the air"?
If that was so, they had descendants to carry on the business because they both died before 1800.
Thorough research remains to be done into the Geneva business. However, the coincidence of the products and the times prompts us to think that there are close links between this company and the Vaucher Frères company of Fleurier.
VII Charles-Ferdinand Vaucher Watch assembler and dealer in Fleurier at the end of the XVIII Century
Among the watch-assemblers in Fleurier at the end of the XVIII century and contemporaries of the Vaucher Frères, mention should be made of Charles-Ferdinand Vaucher (1764-1847), son of the watchmaker, Jean-Jacques-François Vaucher.
Of him it is known that he set up in business in the house that currently serves as the Post Office. A portrait preserved at Môtiers Museum shows him holding in his hand a letter from Paris, indicating that he sold watches there just as did his father-in-law, Jean-Jacques-Henri Berthoud, and his brother-in-law, Jonas, whose business, Berthoud Father and Son, was installed in the court of the Sainte-Chapelle.
At that time, the watch-assembly system made it possible to provide many small specialised workshops, each specialising in one component of a watch, with a livelihood. The assemblers assemble the parts of the watch and entrusted the finished products to the traders who knew the markets well.
We have not found any watches signed by Charles-Ferdinand Vaucher, and there is no precise indication that permits us to attribute to him those bearing the signature Vaucher or Vaucher au Val-de-Travers. It is, nevertheless, thought that this watchmaking company was of a certain importance at the time.
The son of Charles-Ferdinand, Charles-Henri, born in 1793, was later to open a shop in London and he played a considerable role in the introduction of the manufacture of Chinese watches to Fleurier.
VII The crisis of the early XIX century and the search for outlets abroad
At the beginning of the XIX century, Napoleon’s protectionist policy and the unstable situation in Europe put an end to the prosperity of the Neuchâtel watch industry. Many watchmakers gave up the trade, turned to other activities or left the country. Some had to resort to smuggling to export their products.
Others persisted, diversified their trade and went to seek out more far-flung markets. That was the case with the Bovet brothers and Charles-Henri Vaucher who expatriated himself to England.
VIII XIX Century the Vaucher du Guilleri 3rd generation of watch-makers
After the arrival of his first child in Thun when he was only 16 years old, George-Alfred Vaucher (1795- 1840), son of the priest, Charles-Daniel and grandson of David-Jean-Jacques-Henri Vaucher du Guilleri, founded the Vaucher Neveu watch company.
It specialised in trade with Italy, the gateway to the NearEast, and it also imported olive oil .
It was Georges-Alfred Vaucher who, probably before 1830, had the house in the Rue du Temple, the current head office of Parmigiani Fleurier, built. His wife, Louise Lohner, who was to succeed him at the head of the company for three years, was to give him 8 more children.
Claude-Jean-Pierre Vaucher du Guilleri’s two sons,Claude-Henri (I795 -?) and César-Arnold (1798-1876) continued the assembly of watches. We do not know how long they kept the corporate style Vaucher Frères.
In a report, published in 1873, on the beginnings of watchmaking in Fleurier, César-Arnold Vaucher claims that about 1820, he introduced the frequency of the balance at 18,000 oscillations an hour, a technical innovation which was quickly to spread. Was it because of this invention, or the inheritance left to him by his parents and grandparents, that he accumulated his very considerable fortune?
He was a committed republican, and is recognised as having been jointly responsible for the damage done to Neuchâtel Castle during the uprising of 1831.
IX The rise of the Chinese watch Edouard Bovet William Ilbery and Charles-Henri Vaucher
The Bovet brothers - Frederic, Alphonse and Edouard – who were contemporaries of George-Alfred Vaucher and his cousins, in 1815, set out to open a watch business in London. In 1818, Edouard (1797-1849) left for Canton, engaged by a London company. After two years, with his brothers established in London and his brother Gustave who had remained in Fleurier, he founded a company with a view to developing the trade in watches with China,
Thanks to the immense market that it was to open, this company was again, as from the second quarter of the XIX century, to give a formidable boost to watchmaking production in Fleurier
The assembly of the Chinese calibres occupied a great number of workshops throughout the area and in Geneva for the enamelled boxes.
Generally sold in pairs in a single case, these good quality, simple or top-of-the-range watches can be identified by their visible engraved or mirror-polished steel movement. They are made on the model of those created by a famous London watchmaker, William Ilbéry.
It is known that, just as Bovet, Charles-Henri Vaucher had settled in London about 1820. The precise date of his return to Fleurier is uncertain.
Two volumes of his business correspondence, covering the period 1834-1838, are preserved in the archives of the Canton of Neuchâtel. From this, we learn that he assembled Chinese watches
For William llbéry, whose son or nephew was serving his watch making apprenticeship in Fleurier. Charles-Henri Vaucher spent half the year living in London where he indulged in the tools and iron trade. He also imported textiles from England. "Never before in human memory can it be recalled when business went so well", he wrote in 1834 to justify a delay in the delivery of 18 pairs of watches ordered by llbéry.
In 1838, Louis Bovet, the nephew of Edouard Bovet, wrote to his uncle: "A quantity of watches have arrived from Vaucher, enamelled as well as others",
These watches were those of Charles-Henri Vaucher but it does not say who was charged with selling them, nor for how long this trade lasted.
X Trade with China the Vaucher Frères company founded in 1843
In the wake of Bovet, and given such a flourishing market, other Val-de-Travers watch making companies were established in China. Such was the case, inter alia, of the Dimier Frères, the Juvet company and Vaucher Frères since 1843.
Alfred-Louis (1817-1880), Edouard-Auguste, (1819-1847), James-Henri (1824-1871), Frederic-Henri known as Fritz (1827-1913) and Albert-Emile (1833-1888), are the five sons of George-Alfred Vaucher who traded in watches under the name of Vaucher Neveu.
The Vaucher Brothers, who settled in Fleurier, where they had a shopin the family house in Rue du Temple, and in Canton and Shanghai in China, devoted themselves to trading in watches, musical boxes, olive oil, tea and Chinese objects, from 1843 to 1866, when they finally had to go into liquidation.
Throughout their activity, authenticated deeds giving proxy rights to merchants in Milan, Venice and Leghorn, indicate that they had not given up the Italian market formerly held by Vaucher Neveu.
In 1856, James Vaucher appointed Emile Dubois, a trader in Naples, as his agent to collect debts in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilys.
At 28 years of age, Edouard Vaucher was murdered by pirates when he set out to go to Hong-Kong then on to Shanghai, carrying with him approximately 40' 000 francs worth of Swiss watches.
That did not prevent his brothers from continuing their trade with China where living conditions became increasingly dangerous for foreigners because of political unrest.
Just before the company went bankrupt, Albert, the youngest separated from his brothers, in 1863, and set up for his own account in Hong-Kong, where he spent his last years.
The few beautiful Chinese gold, enamel and pearl watches signed Vaucher Fleurier, so characteristic for their polished steel movement, which have come down to us, must be of their manufacture.
XI The Vaucher watchmakers in the XX century
With the beginning of the XX century, watch making systems changed considerably.
Assembly gave way to factories.
Fleurier became a small industrial centre thanks to several significant companies such as Fleurier Watch, Universo S.A. and the Ebauches Factory. From 1851 to1985 - intermittently because of the periods of crisis - the Watchmaking School made it possible to continue the acquisition of know-how.
We cannot here list all the Vauchers originating from Fleurier who have played a role in the development of the Swiss watch industry, but during the XX century, we must nevertheless mention:
Charles-Alcide Vaucher (1860-1924), founder of the RECTA Watch Factory in Bienne, one of his sons, Maurice Vaucher, was initially a priest before he turned to managing the RECTA and became Chairman of the Swiss Watch Federation from 1933 to 1957.
Edouard-André Vaucher, founder of the balance factory at Evilard and his son, Werner Alfred, who directed the Swiss Balance Factory in La Sagne and, in 1932, became the first Manager of the United Balance Factories whose central office was in Bienne. His son, Hugues, was also the Manager from 1960.
Frank Vaucher, ahighly skilled adjuster with the Longines chronometryservice.
XII Vaucher Factory Fleurier in the XX century
The stakes today not being what they were in the past, Vaucher Factory Fleurier has equipped itself with the means to ensure the development and manufacture of the quasi-totality of the components necessary for both the movement and the casing of the watch, thus aiming for maximum independence.