I spent an October 2016 morning at the Switzerland County Courthouse researching my family. I brought a list of records to search for including my ancestor’s will that was missing from the FHL microfilm, circuit court order book pages missing from the FHL microfilms (obviously whoever microfilmed Switzerland County records had problems turning pages), and probate packets of my ancestors’ estates. Plus I just wanted to explore what genealogically relevant materials were available for future research trips.

The Switzerland County, Indiana Courthouse is located at 212 West Main Street in Vevay, Indiana. The courthouse is currently open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8:00 AM to 3:30 PM and Thursday from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Parking is free on the surrounding streets.

When I arrived, I checked in at the recorder’s office located in the back of the building on the left, if you enter from Main Street. Deed books and their indexes are located in the vault in the Recorder’s office.

One of the employees in the Recorder’s office unlocked the genealogy room in the basement for me. The genealogy room contains the probate books, court books, marriage books, mortgage books, tax books, insanity records, and much more.

Loose papers for probates, court cases, marriage returns, and more are located in filing cabinets organized by the first letter of the first surname mentioned. So if you are searching for a court case, you’ll may need to search through multiple letters to find which individual the packet is filed under. These packets are not organized by type or date. Additional packets are unsorted in other filing cabinets.

I had hoped to pull and copy a number of probate packets during my research trip. Because the packets are minimally organized, it took much longer than I had anticipated to find what I wanted. Instead of searching just the probate packets by year, I had to search through all of the drawers (between 1 and 8 drawers for each letter) and through all of the probates, court cases, and other packets for the beginning letter of each surname. The positive is that I was able to find records that I did not previously know about, including a few court cases that involved my ancestors and the arrest warrant of my great grandfather (he drove an overloaded truck over a muddy road and got in trouble, not super criminal, but still interesting).

There are two tables in the genealogy room that makes it easy to pull records and review them. A copy machine is also available. Copies are $1 each. Alternatively, you can bring a digital camera or use your smartphone to take photos of records for free. Computers and other electronic devices are allowed.