US citizen in lifetime project to collect Guernsey history

AN AMERICAN citizen has embarked on a lifelong project as he aims to restore Guernsey history.

John Deichler (fifth from right) attending the Chief Pleas upon his first visit to Guernsey. He is US citizen and Guernsey Fief owner who has been buying parts of Guernsey history and donating them back to the island as part of a project he started last year. (32124363)

John Deichler, 40, was raised in Dallas, Texas and has lived in the United States his whole life, studying business administration and management at Austin College and currently working for an American based retailer of petroleum products.

He has a lineal connection to the Bailiwick dating back on his mother’s side of the family and is the owner of a Guernsey fief.

‘While I am deeply proud of this connection to the island, I am not native-born and feel compelled to earn it through meaningful contributions made,’ said Mr Deichler, who is starting an online masters degree in English at Cambridge University this October.

The project is being run in collaboration with La Societe Guernesiaise.

He has spent the past year seeking out items of Guernsey history, buying them and donating them to the Island Archives, Priaulx Library and Guernsey Museum.

Mr Deichler said he scans internet auctions houses, including Saleroom, Invaluable and eBay, daily and uses Guernsey keywords to find historical items linked to the Bailiwick.

‘As a lifelong student history and appreciator of unique history that Guernsey has, I appreciated the deep peculiarity of a Guernsey seigneur living in the United States and I wished to add value to the community in a way that was meaningful,’ said Mr Deichler.

‘Where these items do not belong is on a collector’s shelf to sit for an unknown amount of decades or centuries.’

He made his first donation in October last year on a trip to the Bailiwick that included his attendance at Chief Pleas.

The donation featured the first written notification to the Home Office in London alerting them to the outbreak of cholera in 1832, the largest epidemic to ever strike the island, including Covid.

Mr Deichler is returning to Guernsey this October with a collection that already includes more than 75 genealogical documents and a 1.1kg silver trophy cup, presented by Queen Victoria to the winner of the 1886 Guernsey Races.

John Deichler is a US citizen and Guernsey Fief owner who has been buying parts of Guernsey history and donating them back to the island as part of a project he started last year. He is returning to the Bailiwick in October with donations that include this 1.1kg silver trophy cup, presented by Queen Victoria to the winner of the 1886 Guernsey Races. (32124883)

‘When I saw the cup I just couldn’t let somebody else take that, it belongs in Guernsey.’

The project is three-quarters self-funded, with a goal to stay at below $5,000 a year already having been exceeded.

Mr Deichler is now looking to other history enthusiasts to join forces with him and La Societe.

‘I would like to assemble a coalition of the willing who would be open to partner on larger opportunities,’ he said.

‘What happens if we find something from Victor Hugo? When we do find these big items I would hate for them to slip through our fingertips because we hadn’t taken the time to build awareness.’

Those interested should contact info@societe.org.gg.