The Iberia Parish Court Building is located at 300 Iberia Street in New Iberia, Louisiana. On the day of my visit, Succession Records were on my mind. My second-great Grandfather, Hildebert Theriot (sometimes spelled without the silent H, Ildebert), and his wife, Louise Elmina Delahoussaye, lived and died in Iberia Parish. Research pointed to Hildebert’s succession documents kept in this courthouse.
The Court Records office is on the first floor. Once inside this office, there is a public counter with helpful staff. They told me to help myself to the Index Books, a right turn and immediately adjacent to the public counter. I was told taking pictures of the actual recordings is discouraged, and there is a fee for copies—normal rules. Naturally, there are no birth or death records but plenty of conveyance and successions.
Conveyances are numbered in order, and the actual documents are kept by book within a given number range. These are neatly shelved, some to the ceiling. Once the record’s number is found, find the corresponding book and flip some pages. Copies are made by the staff at the public counter – $1 each; printed out on legal-sized paper. There seems to be a little dispute between the children in Hildebert’s succession, which is excellent from a genealogical perspective, but at a dollar a page, cut into my research budget.
Whenever I’m in a court records repository, I like to check for other families known to have been in the same geographic area. I’ll also run the pages looking for names that jump out at me. This time, it paid off. Hildebert’s mother, Marie Rosalie Romero, had a much earlier succession.
Parking next to the court building, west side. Look north from the parking lot and see St. Peter’s Cemetery.
Aaron Tassin, MLIS 