Using immigration and naturalization forms when researching ancestors

Friday, July 13, 2012
Courtesy photo The author was lucky to find James Tracey's declaration of intention to become a citizen.

Susan Doak

SW Nebraska Genealogy Society

I know with almost certainty that there is no Native American blood coursing through my veins.

Consequently, all of my predecessors were immigrants to the United States. My maternal grandmother's family is traceable to 1610 when the first Goding descendant landed on North American soil as a ship's captain. However, as I said in an earlier column, my paternal Coady ancestors arrived in the 1840's, just five short generations before my birth. My children's great-grandparents were Germans from Russia immigrants, just three generations on US soil.

In 1790, the newly formed United States of America passed its first laws concerning Naturalization. Becoming a citizen was an option, not a requirement to remain in the USA. Those laws were handled by the individual courts throughout the country with no national records. Some of those records are hard, if not impossible to find.

Immigrants in the 1850's, such as my Irish ancestors, had to declare their intention to become citizens of the United States with the District Court of the county where they resided.

Those records, when available, are open to the public in the appropriate county courthouse.

When you research the history of your relatives becoming citizens from 1790 to 1906 and you are very, very lucky those relatives settled in an area and stayed put, thereby making your search relatively easy. But, as we all know, we were a country of adventurers and seekers of a better life.

Not much grass grew under my ancestors' feet, and as we traveled through Iowa, my cousin and I searched for the records showing that our Irish ancestors had filed to become citizens and found only one declaration of intention to become a citizen: James Tracey, our great-great-great grandfather.

Once an immigrant filed their intention, they then had five years in which to file their petition for Naturalization. The process varied by state but essentially an immigrant would have been in this country for seven years before the test to become a full citizen, and they did not have to file their petition in the same county or state in which the intent was filed.

We found no petition for James Tracey but if he had followed through with that petition, his wife and children were automatically citizens when he became a citizen. In fact, wives were granted automatic citizenship in that manner until 1922 but neither they nor the children were always listed on the petition, making them very hard to trace.

In 1906, the laws were changed to put all control in the hands of the federal government. If your ancestors arrived and/or became citizens from a record date of 1897 to now, you can request those records from the Immigration and Naturalization Service on a form G639. Make sure that you fill in as much information as possible so that you get the right "John Doe" because as I have mentioned before, many immigrants had the same family names.

The G639 form is available by calling 1-800-870-3676. For help finding local records that exist before 1897, SW Nebraska Genealogy Society can help you navigate those records.

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