Sunday, April 30, 2000
The National Archives may have the naturalization records for Great Grandpa Horbal, since he was naturalized in the District Court of The United States rather than at a state or county court. The National Archives site lists the Records of District Courts of the United States as being Research Group 21.
Looking through the listings of available items on microfilm (divided by research group), it appears that no records for federal courts in Ohio are filmed. Records for the courts would be held at the regional National Archives site in Chicago, I think. In fact, among their holdings, they list:
Cleveland
Indexes: 1855-1903
Declarations of Intention: 1855-1943
Petitions: 1855-1903
They even include instructions for how to get records, so I guess I don’t need to fly to Chicago. :-)
The reason I’m interested in this is because, when reading Greenwood’s book the other night, I noticed that the section on naturalization records said that the Declaration of Intent required that someone applying to become a citizen include a lot of information:
such information as applicant’s name, age, occupation, and personal description; date and place of birth; citizenship; present address and last foreign address; vessel and port of embarkation for the United States; U.S. port and date of arrival in the United States; and date of application and signature. (footnoted as from the Guide to Genealogical Research in the National Archives, so it’s probably on their web site as well....)
Needless to say, all this information would come in very handy, especially since Great Grandpa didn’t seem to mention any of this stuff anywhere else. Much of the same information is listed for naturalization petitions, but the holdings listed for Cleveland only claim to have petitions up to 1903.
Hmmm, they even have a page to e-mail your inquiry....
Posted at 12:03:12 AM
