From Cornwall to New York

More than 6,000 kilometers and an ocean separate Cornol from New York and yet almost 500 inhabitants of the village of Ajoulot emigrated to America between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Approximately 98% of these Jurassians settled in the United States between 1830 and 1930, with a good proportion staying in New York. An urban legend even says that there would have been a “Cornol Street” in the American city, to express the importance of this migration.

A book for the memory of hundreds of emigrants

The Bruntrutain historian Marie-Angèle Lovis recounts this migratory phenomenon, part of the history of Cornol, in her book “A Swiss village emigrates, the case of Cornol in the canton of Jura (1815-1956)”, published last month edited by Alphil . You have collected many documents, collected in the Jura or in the United States, to reconstruct the journey of several hundred emigrants.

The “Cornol case”

The migratory history of Cornol has not followed the rhythm or the contingents of the migrations observed in the region. According to Marie-Angèle Lovis, “the first inhabitants of Cornol who left in 1880 made a lot of publicity with their families and it snowed”, she explains to explain the waves of departures specific to the village of Ajoulot.

The Ajoulots who crossed the Atlantic aboard huge ocean liners were often young and integrated easily across the Atlantic, through churches, naturalization or the army for men, explains Marie-Angèle Lovis. “But they’ve maintained pretty close ties to each other,” she says.

In the footsteps of the Cornol emigrants

Marie-Angèle Lovis, driven by an incredible duty of collective memory, traveled by boat to New York in 2016, in the footsteps of the inhabitants of Cornol. These emigrants have left many traces, still visible today. Bruntrutaine found Jura homes in Queens or a particular church they frequented. /mmi