US Naturalization Records

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Anyone with relatives who emigrated to the USA might think they wouldn't be able to access US government records about their citizenship. It's now quite easy to access a lot of these records by ordering them online and having them posted to you as a PDF file on a CD. I've just received the naturalization record of my Grandad's Aunt Elizabeth who emigrated in 1913 and eventually became a US Citizen in Chicago in 1940. The PDF contains scans of four pages including:-

1. Certificate of Arrival: Includes date of arrival, ship and port
2. Declaration of Intention: Includes physical description and photo
3. Petition of Naturalization: Includes affidavits of character witnesses
4. Oath of Allegiance: Taken to become US citizen

There are indexes to US Naturalizations on Ancestry and Family Search these should give you enough information to identify your people and order their full record if they completed the process. I hadn't considered trying to obtain these records because I thought I would need to hire a US researcher and it would be very expensive. Obtaining this record from NARA the US government archive organisation only cost me $7.50 including free postage.


Here are some links for Chicago and New York:-

Chicago

http://www.archives.gov/great-lakes/fin ... cords.html

New York

http://www.archives.gov/northeast/nyc/f ... cords.html


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