The Bertoch family story begins with the history of a religious sect known as the Waldensians. During the 12th century, Peter Waldo preached in Lyons, France a doctrine of poverty and dedication of the individual's life to Christ. Waldo gained many followers who preached with him, and when a local bishop told them to stop preaching, they refused. Since Catholic church leaders held the only authority for preaching and interpreting scripture, church authorities considered the Waldensians heretical and promptly excommunicated them. Thereafter, Waldensians became distrustful of church authorities.

The Waldensians lived in tight-knit communities where they could practice their faith, but they became highly persecuted because of their heretical beliefs. In the early 13th century, neighbors drove them out of urban life. The Waldensians experienced a diaspora as they spread out and relocated in various towns in France and Italy. They lived in isolated communities until 1532 when they aligned with Protestants and changed some of their doctrines and rituals. Joining a larger target for persecution, the Waldensians shared in Protestants' religious struggles with the Catholic church for the next 200 years.

By the 19th century, Reformed Protestants and Calvinists in Switzerland believed that Waldensian doctrines and rituals corresponded with their own and therefore seemed closer to early Christianity than Catholicism had been. American churches like the Mormons, Adventists, and Bible Students believed that the Waldensians' history of persecution, their refusal to acknowledge papal authority, and several of their practices and doctrines seemed to coincide with their belief that some kind of apostasy had taken place before the Catholic church gained a stronghold in Europe. They believed that the Waldensians had tried to retain the pure doctrines of the early Christian church.

LDS leader Lorenzo Snow shared in the belief that the Waldensians were the closest sect to the truth as defined by the Mormon church. As a missionary, Snow believed that these people were ready for the Mormon message, and some Waldensians in Piedmont, Italy were indeed ripe for the Mormon message. By the 19th century, many Waldensians were disaffected by the direction of their sect, believing that it had given up on its historic mission. In 1852, 36 people converted to the Mormon faith, and 53 more converted the following year.

Among those baptized in 1853 was Jean Bertoch, a 60 year-old farmer and widower whose five children also converted to the Mormon faith. He and his wife, Marguerite Bounous (1804-1840) had three sons and two daughters: Jean, Antoinette, Marguerite, Daniel, and Jacques. Jean and his children were baptized on 3 August 1853 and on the 23rd Jean was ordained an elder.

Part of the Mormon message included an opportunity to move to Utah, where missionaries claimed that an individual could have access to land and live in security. Overpopulation, few jobs for skilled laborers, and massive crop failures caused by grape disease and potato rot caused many Italians to consider immigrating to the United States. When the LDS First Presidency published the Ninth General Epistle in April 1853 instructing all church members to move to Utah, the church promised that its Perpetual Emigrating Fund program could only pay for a few. Immediately after his baptism Jean began to make preparations to move to Utah. He sold his home, the adjoining cropland, and a second plot of land he used for farming.

However, Jean would not go on the trek to Utah just yet. Jabez Woodard, mission president of Jean's mission, asked him to stay and preside over a new church branch. Jean's children left for Utah without him. He sent them with some assistance from the Perpetual Emigrating Fund, comforted knowing that Woodard would be with them on the journey. Jean (26), Antoinette (23), Marguerite (21), Daniel (18), and Jacques (15), speaking French as their first language and Italian as their second, left for a strange land with twenty other Mormon converts in February 1854.

The trek completely transformed the Bertoch family. As passengers were detained on Arsenal Island outside of St. Louis, Missouri for inspection and quarantine, Marguerite died of cholera. The young woman was buried on the island with eleven others who died within hours of her death. The siblings met up with a Mormon wagon company, and while camping near Ft. Kearny in Nebraska Territory that August, Jean died of pneumonia. The next month, near Ft. Laramie, Jacques fell from a wagon, its wheels running over his legs. He recovered, but he and his sister had wandered away from the company and became lost in the mountains. Jacques and Antoinette arrived in the Salt Lake Valley two days after their company's wagons arrived on 24 October 1854. Daniel traveled with a different company, which arrived four days later.

Knowing that the Bertoches were unaccompanied by their father, Brigham Young asked Joseph Toronto, a Sicilian convert, to supervise them. His Italian helped the Bertoches feel less alienated. However, they soon went to work helping Toronto tend Brigham Young's cattle on Antelope Island, thereby paying off their loan from the Perpetual Emigration Fund.

Soon the family encountered more challenges. The Bertoches' father, Jean, left Italy to start the trek to Utah in February 1855. Sadly, Jean was among the cholera victims at Mormon Grove later that year. Antoinette left the Island in February 1856 to marry Louis Chapuis, a 29-year-old French-speaking convert from Lausanne, Switzerland. She settled in Nephi and raised four children.

Anxious to start their own families and futures, Daniel and Jacques decided to work to establish themselves. In Fall 1856 Daniel started to work for brothers George D. and Jedediah Grant at Mound Fort, and built a good reputation with his mentors. Jacques stayed with Toronto and became foreman of Toronto's personal ranch.

In Fall 1857 Jacques, a young 19-year-old now going by the name "Jack," followed Toronto to Echo Canyon to help prepare resistance to government troops under Col. Albert Sidney Johnston. Daniel also became involved in preparing to fight federal troops. He followed George D. Grant and other militiamen to the Provo River bottoms, staying there for two months while the army passed through Salt Lake City. After the troops left without a fuss, both brothers went back to their jobs.

Over the next decade, Daniel and Jack gradually assimilated into Mormon society. They learned English, worked for their patrons, attended church, and married British converts who had immigrated to the territory. In 1866, both brothers married. Daniel married Elva Hampton on 24 November 1866, and together the couple had four children. After Elva died 19 February 1874, Daniel married Sarah Ann Richards in December of that year, and the family grew when Sarah bore five children. Jack (by this time going by James) was also married in May 1866 to Ann Cutcliffe, with whom he created a large family of thirteen children.

Daniel and James worked for their patrons until the Homestead Act of 1862 enabled them to purchase their own land. After the United States Land Office was established in 1869, Utahns could now own land if they could show evidence that they inhabited and improved it. Daniel applied for 80 acres on 22 October 1873 near Littleton in Morgan County, and James applied for 79.8 acres on 20 June 1874 near what is now Pleasant Green in Salt Lake County. The U.S. Land Office granted Daniel title in 1879, and James received title in 1881.

After nearly 25 years, Daniel and James now lived what had been promised them when they lived in Italy. They had been told that if they moved to Utah they could own land, but because of their differences and their initial isolation, assimilation was difficult for the Bertoches. As Michael W. Homer writes: "Initially, the Bertoches did not assimilate into Mormon society because they retained their cultural distinctiveness in their tiny community of three people. They continued to speak French, they prayed from their prayer books, and they remained essentially a Waldensian family" (p. 213). It was once they left the island and separated that they began to gradually assimilate into American society.

Almost forty years after leaving, James returned to his ancestral home as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. James spent fourteen months in Switzerland and ten months in Italy, serving in the same area where he lived as a boy.