Once upon a time, a resident of New Glarus could open the local phone book and it seemed as if the pages were filled with the same nine or 10 last names.

Streiff. Duerst. Hoesly. Stuessy. Hefty. Zweifel. Elmer. Kubly. Marty.

Those days have changed, of course. New Glarus has grown, families have moved in and out, and the old phone book has mostly been replaced by smartphones and search bars. But the names endure. They remain on mailboxes, storefronts, cemetery stones, yearbooks, church records and old family trees, connecting modern New Glarus to the canton of Glarus in eastern Switzerland.

Many of the best-known New Glarus surnames are not simply “Swiss” names in a general sense. They are Glarner names, tied specifically to Canton Glarus, its mountain villages and the families who left Switzerland in the 1800s to build a new community in Green County.