Switzerland County Historical Museum

The Switzerland County Historical Museum highlights the local culture and life from Native Americans to the Swiss settlers on through the 20th century here in Switzerland County. Exhibit topics include Early Swiss Heritage, Veterans Remembered, Professions, Domestic Arts, The Farmstead, and Childhood Memories.

The museum was originally a Presbyterian Church built in 1860, with lovely stained glass windows still in place.

Visit our conservation and research room if you have ancestry connected to Switzerland County. We will search our files to help with your quest.

Exhibits

New exhibit ~ “A Study of Switzerland County’s Earliest People ~ The Burley Collection” recently debuted. Nelson Burley farmed the bottom lands on his property east of Patriot, Indiana for over fifty years. He had a habit of gathering pieces, “arrowheads” and stone tools that he found while plowing and tending the land. Over 2,000 pieces "in the rough" were donated after Nelson passed away. While a digital display by Ball State University is still a work-in-progress, a visual display that shows a timeline spanning 10,000 years from Paleoindian through late Woodland, with artifacts representative of each period, is now on display.

Participation in Museum Day is open to any tax-exempt or governmental museum or cultural venue on a voluntary basis. Smithsonian magazine encourages museum visitation, but is not responsible for and does not endorse the content of the participating museums and cultural venues, and does not subsidize museums that participate.