I love a good naturalization record. Sworn to and signed by the petitioner herself. How often have YOU seen your second-grandparents' signatures? Or their handwritten "X." Declarations Of Intent help fill in the blanks on a family's dates of birth. Often but not always, full legal names are shown. A researcher's dream! Names of ports of entry and departure from countries. Passenger ships identified that can easily be googled to locate photos of now-destroyed vessels.
And birth places. Just when you think your ancestors hailed from one country, you discover no, it was from another place. A surprise ethnicity! A DNA analysis might SUGGEST where your ancestor lived, but the all- important paper trail, baby. That's what tells you WHO came from WHERE and WHEN. I'm still reeling from a 1759 document bearing my maternal 6xG-Grandfather's name with his birthplace as Stockholm--not in Germany.
Yesterday my sisters and I wondered if homes once lived in by long-ago family friends and neighbors had suffered property loss due to California's wretched fires. Old city directories on Ancestry provided their addresses to then plug into maps on news media websites now showing evacuated areas. Curious about some of these old friends--peers of my parents with whom we've lost contact, I continued to run their names through census and vital records.
I was surprised to learn of one friend's husband who has a burial record indicating service in three wars. Three! WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.
Another friend's family was once forcibly moved to a concentration camp in Wyoming in 1942. The Heart Mountain War Relocation Center was a "barbed-wire-surrounded enclave with unpartitioned toilets, cots for beds, and a budget of 45 cents daily per capita for food rations." This same 16 year old American citizen, born in California, spent a year in a hell-hole dump of a camp with 10,000+ others--many who were also citizens. Their homes and businesses forfeited, they left home with only a few suitcases. Their new camp was poorly insulated, offering little warmth against a Wyoming winter. While it may have interrupted our friend's education, she went on to pursue a medical degree and became a well-respected physician. I wish I could hug her, and apologize for the racism shown to her family by our government.
Another family friend's grandfather, I learned, immigrated from the Netherlands to the U.S. in 1888. It is his record which prompted this post for those unfamiliar with naturalizations. See Mr. M. De Groot's 1917 Declaration of Intention and Petition for Naturalization from the US District Court, Southern District of California, County of Los Angeles.
Difficult to read? Here's a short extraction, beginning with the Declaration of Intention:
Martin DeGroot, age 45, painter by occupation, 142 lbs, brown hair, brown eyes, was born in Nieve Nildrop, Netherlands on 9 November 1869. I now reside at 1648 West 55th St., Los Angeles, CA. I emigrated to USA from Liverpool, England on a White Star Line ship. My last foreign residence was Amsterdam, Holland.
I renounce forever all allegiance to Wilhelmina, Queen of the Netherlands. I arrived at the port of New York on the 10th day of March 1888. I am not an anarchist or polygamist.
/s/ (his signature)
Declaration of Intention No. 1980 filed this 11 Jan 1917.
And, The Petition for Naturalization:
I declared my intention to become a citizen on 1 Dec 1914 in Los Angeles. I am married to Anna DeGroot, born 22 Dec 1874 in Hargs (sp?) Sweden, and our three children are:
Lillian, born 3 Apr 1894, Grand Rapids, Michigan;
Mabel, 16 Nov 1895, Sparta, "; and
Ethel, 10 Dec 1897, Grand Rapids, " .
I have resided continuously in USA since 20 Mar 1888, and in the State of California since 15 Sep 1906.
Source: U.S., Naturalization Records, 1840-1957 via National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington, D.C.; Naturalization Records of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, Central Division (Los Angeles), 1887-1940; Microfilm Roll: 64; Microfilm Serial: M152
Ancestry.com has this reminder for those searching for their family's petitions:
However, from the time the first naturalization act was passed in 1790 until 1906,
there were no uniform standards. As a consequence, before September 1906, various
federal, state, county, and local courts generated a wide variety of citizenship records that
are stored in sundry courts, archives, warehouses, libraries, and private collections. After
1906 the vast majority of naturalizations took place in federal courts.
After 1906, Petitions required signed Oaths of Allegiance. In this instance, Mr. De Groot swore he was not an anarchist nor a practicing polygamist. Now. Isn't THAT interesting. To my knowledge none of my anarchist friends have plural marriages. While these alleged travesties of 1917 may not have been practiced in common, either one or the other ideology might easily tempt an unwitting citizen. Best to stop 'em at the border, is the familiar cry. Perhaps one or two in your family slipped through? [insert silly face emoji here] Send me your immigrant ancestors' names, and let's see.