Tardent Crest


Message from the editors

We love getting emails from our readers.  Please get in touch and tell us about your Tardent story.  We will do our best to publish it as part of our endeavour to inform all the descendants of this unique Swiss French family how we have left the Ormonts Valley and established ourselves around the globe. 

Contact email: contact@tardent-history.info

This website is intended to be a compilation and resource of information, related to the Tardent family, who spent the best part of the last millennium in  the Ormonts Valley, Canton Vaud Switzerland.

It is a work-in-progress and is growing as we have the time and effort to develop the site.

It is intended to be a collaborative effort by any who are descended from this mountain family, or have a relevant interest and information. We'd simply love to hear from you. 

Please forward any suggestions, contributions or comments in electronic format  to contact@tardent-history.info

As far as, and as soon as  possible we will gauge your  material  against our editorial policy.

One thing we will publish on this page is scanned photos of any Tardent descendent in the Ormonts or the Chablais, no matter how recent or how long ago. 

Clair de Lune Pic Chaussy - photo by Marc-Andre Guex

 Tour de Mayen and Tour d'Ai - photo by Pierre Vallet

Postcripts

...from Nya Murray, Leysin, 22nd February, 2009. 

It is very touching to read the history compiled by my great-grandfather Henry Tardent, born Le Sepey, 1853. It encompasses and provides commentary on  the manuscript of David Tardent, schoolmaster of Vevey.  Henry discovered this account by accident, when his voyage in search of a  young man's fortune took him to the Swiss colony of Chabag, started by another Tardent, Louis Samuel Vincent, some fifty odd years before Henry's arrival.  Henry and Louis Samuel shared a common ancestor, David Tardent of Cergnat. ( Louis's great-great-grandfather, and  Henry's great-great-great-great grandfather.  

I had the great pleasure to read Henry's story while I was hiking to Le Fer, when I stopped for a picnic lunch.  Walking through these mountains has given me the best possible perspective on my antecedents. The experience is very pleasurable, if somewhat physically demanding. 

We Tardent descendants are very fortunate, we are standing on the shoulders of men and women of courage, fortitude, intelligence, wit and charm. 

Henry was right, in opening his history with a remark about the importance of  ordinary, peaceful families to recount and record their stories, perspective, and events.  Much more interesting than violence, conquest, and then a successive wave of the same!  

...from Felix Tardent, Gold Coast, 31st July, 2009. 
 

I am the grandson of Henri and Hortense Tardent who were French speaking Swiss living in Czarist Russia and who migrated to Queensland in 1887. I am the son of their eldest son Paul who was 10 years old when  he arrived in Brisbane. He spoke no English, only French and Russian.

I was born in 1926, and I remember my father as always having a most comprehensive knowledge of the English language which he spoke fluently and without any trace of accent. Practically all my childhood was spent in the provincial city of Rockhampton where my dad was manager of the State Government Insurance Office.As for me I was educated at the Allenstown State School and later at the Rockhampton Boys' Grammar School  before joining the staff of the Commonwealth Bank in 1942. I was totally Australian in outlook and a very proud Australian. I was very conscious of how well my grandfather Henri had settled into Australian society who had acknowledged his literary, linguistic,and viticultural skills. I  was also very aware four Tardents had fought with the Australian army at Gallipoli and in France and Belgium during the Great War and two of these had lost their lives with my uncle Emile seriously wounded.
                 
From about the age of seven I recall my father talking about his Swiss origins and of his early life in the self governing Swiss community of Chabag in Bessarabia. (After 60  years or so of Swiss self-government,  the Czar had informed the Swiss that they would in future have to accept Russian rule which prompted Henri and Hortense to migrate to Australia in search of opportunity and democratic government.) 

I suspect that I was the only child in Queensland who knew the dates of the battles of Sempach, Morgarten and Morat as well as the significance of the beginning of the Swiss Confederation at the Rutli meadow on 1st. August 1291. The redoubtable Arnold Winckelried who was impaled by Austrian lances at Sempach was my hero. To employ some Australian parlance I am however a "dinki di Aussie" but I am very proud of my Swiss origins.

My wife Frances and I visited Switzerland in 1993 and I experienced  a real sense of belonging , especially when we visited the Ormonts Valley in Canton Vaud the home of my ancestors. I have maintained contact with my Swiss family over many years and my hope is that younger Tardents both in Switzerland and Australia will remain in contact 

Tour de Famelon - photo by Pierre Starobinski