This place is connected to a wider Schild surname story in Swiss watchmaking, not a confirmed part of our direct family line.
Grenchen seen from above, in a print from the 1870s.
Public domain print, via Wikimedia Commons.
Grenchen is a town in the Swiss canton of Solothurn, on the northern edge of the Aare valley. In the middle of the nineteenth century it was a small village. A decision to bring watchmaking to the town, made in the early 1850s, changed that entirely.
Urs Schild moved from schoolteaching into the watch trade there, and in 1856 he and Dr Joseph Girard founded a small workshop making watch movements. As that business grew, and as other manufacturers followed, Grenchen grew alongside it, drawing suppliers of cases, balance wheels, and finishing work into the area. The town became one of Switzerland’s most important watchmaking centers, home to Eterna, ETA, Fortis, and Adolph Schild SA, among others, and remains an important watchmaking hub today.