The Dardels originate from the picturesque shores of the lake of Neuchâtel, in Switzerland. As early as in the 14th century, a Dardel is mentioned in the village of Villiers, in the Val de Ruz. Jehan Dardel, a miller from this village is granted in 1513 the exploitations of mills in Saint-Blaise, on the shore of the lake. The first Dardels are thus millers, but from the 1700's they are found in many trades, as officers (serving foreign armies), judges, surgeons, ministers of the (protestant) church.In 1810, Georges-Alexandre Dardel, an officer serving the English King, is sent to Northern Europe to recruit more troops and falls in love with a Swedish countess. He is knighted by the King of Sweden and obtains the right to add to his name a nobiliary particle, either the Germanic "von Dardel" or the French "de Dardel", as he fancies. He returns to Switzerland in 1816, but his daughter Augusta and his son Fredrick establish themselves in Sweden in the 1840s and found the "Swedish branch" of the family.
See here, in Swedish, the text published on the web site of the Riddarhuset, the "House of Swedish Nobility".
Members of the Dardel family have emigrated to France as early as in the 18th Century. However, most of the French Dardels settled in France about 100 years ago, or more recently. We also have cousins in Chile, Australia and many other countries, and hope to discover other "exotic" Dardels.
Other unrelated Dardels originate from Savoy, an Alpine province between France and Italy, and from other provinces of France.
Genealogy
Our cousin Jean-Paul Dardel, who lives in Hendaye (South West of France, close to the Spanish border), has established a huge family tree, starting with our common ancestor the miller Jean Dardel. You have seen it exhibited at the reunion. Jean-Paul has also published (in French) a book on our family, incorporating the vast genealogical information he has gathered over several years. It contains many details and attached documents.
The book was updated in January 2004. See details (in French).
Separately, François de Dardel, who lives in Paris, has transferred this genealogy on his computer and posted it in this site. The complete genealogy, starting with Jehan the miller, is now available on this site. Just click on the above link. There are now 2950 web pages covering 4365 persons in the on line data base, waiting for you to check... and to report missing or incorrect data to us.
Among these descendants is a painter : Nils Dardel (1888 - 1943), who is famous in Sweden. Six paintings here :
Click on each picture to see it enlarged. The third one is a self portrait of 1906.
A short biography (in Swedish) is available at
and a collection of his works, with description (still in Swedish) at
