a€?Any girl who is now or may hereafter end up being married . . .a€?

By Marian L. Smith

Generally, immigrant females, such as these arrivals at Ellis area, have always had the to be U.S. citizens, but a series of laws and regulations during the nineteenth century worked to help keep specific females out from the naturalization process. (NARA, 90-G-125-3)

The point that women are maybe not just as symbolized among the list of country’s early naturalization files typically astonishes professionals. Those people that assume naturalization exercise and procedure have been because they are now may spend precious time trying to find a nonexistent record. On top of that, most genealogists carry out pick naturalization records for females. The ensuing distress concerning this subject generates a demand for obvious, easy guidance where to steer analysis. Unfortunately, the only guideline one can possibly apply at all U.S. naturalization records-certainly all those in advance of Sep 1906-is that there was no guideline.1

There have been specific legal and personal arrangements, however, overseeing which women did and would not check-out court to naturalize. In general, immigrant girls constantly met with the to be U.S. residents, yet not every court recognized that right. Ever since the mid-nineteenth millennium, a succession of statutes worked maintain some females off naturalization records, either by giving all of them derivative citizenship or barring their naturalization altogether. It is primarily the different rules within the reputation of ladies’ naturalization, together with various process of law’ different understanding of these laws and regulations, which help clarify whether a naturalization record prevails for almost any provided immigrant lady.

Females and Naturalization, ca. 1802a€“1940

While earliest U.S. nationality legislation of 1790, 1795, and 1802 minimal naturalization eligibility to “free white persons,” it decided not to maximum qualification by gender. But as early as 1804 what the law states began to bring differences regarding married feamales in naturalization law. Since that time, and until 1934, whenever men submitted a declaration of objective becoming a citizen but died ahead of naturalization, their widow and lesser youngsters are “considered as citizens regarding the united states of america” if they/she appeared in legal and got the oath of allegiance and renunciation.2 Therefore, among naturalization court records, you can look for an archive of a female taking the oath, but come across no matching affirmation on her, and maybe no petition.

Unless a woman had been single or widowed, she have couple of reasons to naturalize ahead of the twentieth-century. Lady, foreign-born or indigenous, cannot vote. Till the mid-nineteenth century, women generally didn’t hold property or seem as “persons” before the rules. Under these circumstances, just widows and spinsters might be anticipated to search the defenses U.S. citizenship might manage. A person may possibly remember that naturalization involved the installment of legal charge. Without any tangible advantages resulting from a female’s naturalization, really skeptical many lady or their own husbands considered the fees getting cash well spent.

Barbara M. Baier applied for citizenship in U.S. section Court for all the area of Columbia on January 29, 1892. The clerk needed to alter the text to “a lady of good moral fictional character.” (NARA, registers of region Courts of this United States, RG 21)

New guidelines of the mid-1800s started a time when a woman’s capacity to naturalize became dependent upon her marital position. The work of February 10, 1855, was created to benefit immigrant ladies. Under that work, “[a]ny lady who’s now or may hereafter end up being hitched to a citizen regarding the United States, and which might herself become legally naturalized, will be considered a citizen.” Hence alien females generally speaking became U.S. citizens by relationship to a U.S. citizen or through an alien partner’s naturalization. Truly the only women that wouldn’t get citizenship by marriage under this legislation happened to be those racially ineligible for naturalization and, since 1917, those girls whoever wedding to a U.S. resident occurred suspiciously after their arrest for prostitution. The text between an immigrant female’s nationality hence of the woman husband certain most judges that unless the partner of an alien partners became naturalized, the spouse could not being a citizen. While one may find some courts that naturalized the wives of aliens, until 1922 the process of law generally held that alien partner of an alien spouse couldn’t herself be naturalized.3