ChicagoCookGenealogy

GENEALOGY LOOK-UPS

NATURALIZATIONS

 

NEW!!!!!  I am no longer performing these indexing searches. PLEASE READ:

 

Naturalization laws changed often over the years. In addition, application of the laws varied widely from court to court. A very good explanation of this process is available at :

http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/naturalization/naturalization.html

It is impossible for me to summarize these laws in the space provided on my site. Please take the time to review the material published by NARA.  Also, search on M1285 to determine which counties of IL, IA, WI and In are included.

 

The M 1285 index cards filmed by NARA are now browseable for free on ancestry.com. I therefore have stopped performing these searches.  Keep in mind:

Pre 1906  documents do not contain any information that is of genealogy importance. They ARE historical documents, but the only "history" is your ancestor's signature. Most do not contain an address or birthdate on the index card, and it becomes way too time consuming to locate a record that I feel confident stating is really "yours".   Most naturalizations were from local courts and are are stored at the Circuit Court Archives. That archive charges a fee of $9 for a few pages;   After 9/27/1906, the change in laws named everyone in the household, gave addresses, birthdates, etc.  Now you will find information that is definitely of genealogical value. It is also now possible to determine that the index record is the correct record!  

IF the naturalization was performed at a federal court, NARA will send these to you for $10. You can now order online. 

If you wish to obtain naturalization records, you need to use the soundex converter available here or at the rootsweb  site. If there are variant spellings, convert each of them to see if you are dealing with multiple codes.

http://resources.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/soundexconverter

 

Good Luck and Happy Hunting!