Archive for July, 2011

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June 28, 1861, the Pawnee arrived at the Washington, DC, Navy Yard carrying
the body of Capt. James H. Ward, the first US Naval officer killed during the American
Civil War

The previous day, Ward, who was in command of a flotilla in the Chesapeake Bay, send
a landing party to meet Southern forces at Mathias Point in King George County, Va.
They met resistance, and Ward was shot after he moved the ships in to cover for the
landing party as it retreated.

At the beginning of the war, the US Navy had just 90 ships; it grew to 670 ships and
50,000 sailors by mid-1964. The Confederate Navy had 130 warships and 4,000 men at
its largest.

Dramatic
events such as battles and shore bombardments were the exception to the rule for sailors,
according to the book Life
in Civil War America:

“Sailors spent the majority of their time performing routine duties or combating the
effects of tedium. Running a ship required constant if monotonous activity; unlike
soldiers, seamen tended not to have much idle time on their hands. An exception to
this was, of course, Union soldiers on board blockading ships, who often complained
of boredom in journals and letters.”

You’ll use different resources to trace a Civil War sailor than you would if researching
a soldier. Start
with the resources in this free FamilyTreeMagazine.com article on tracing Union and
Confederate sailors.

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I wanted to give you all a heads-up that we’re down to the last few days you can get
these three ShopFamilyTree.com genealogy helps, at least at deeply discounted prices:

• The Ultimate
  Research Trip Collection, our June Kit of the Month, will be unavailable after
  June 30. There are just eight kits left this morning, so get one while you can.

• The Organize
  Your Family History Value Pack: The special price of $49.99—72 percent off full
  price—goes away when June ends.

• The South
  Carolina State Research Collection: This package including a webinar, research
  guide and digital download on tracing Palmetto State ancestors also is discounted
  only through June 30. 

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Fitting that July 4, the day we commemorate adoption of the Declaration of Independence,
is a popular day for citizenship swearing-in ceremonies. Big ones happen every year
at Monticello,
the Virginia home of Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson, and at Seattle
Center, among other places.

(My immigrant great-grandfather, who wasn’t naturalized on the Fourth of July, gives
his birthday on most records as July 4, 1881—I don’t know if he was actually born
that day, or he just knew it was a big day in his new country.)

Here are some pointers on finding your ancestors’ naturalization records:

• Not all immigrants became citizens, and some waited until long after they first arrived
  in the United States. Typically, men who were birds of passage (they traveled between
  their homeland and America several times before settling here) didn’t rush to become
  citizens.

• The citizenship process involved filing a declaration of intention to naturalize,
  also called first papers, then waiting a legally proscribed amount of time (this varied
  over time) before filing a petition for naturalization, or—you guessed it—second papers. See
  more on the process, as well as an exception for those in the military, here.

• Your ancestor could file papers at any courthouse. He could even begin the process
  in one court and finish it another. Aliens more often applied at county and state
  courts than at the federal level because the fee was usually lower and it was often
  closer to home. To find naturalization records before 1906, you’ll need to check municipal,
  county, state and federal courthouses where the immigrant lived. 

• After 1906, courts had to file copies of naturalizations with the Immigration and
  Naturalization Service (now US Citizenship and Naturalization Services, or USCIS).
  You can order copies of these records for your ancestor from the USCIS
  Genealogy Service. 

• Online sources of naturalization records and/or indexes to naturalization records
  for various parts of the country include subscription sites Ancestry.com and Footnote.com,
  and the free FamilySearch.

• Many naturalization records and the indexes have been microfilmed. Search for them
  in the Family
  History Library Catalog by running a Place search for the state and county (the
  city, too, if it’s a large urban area), then look under Naturalization and Citizenship.
  You can rent film through a branch FamilySearch Center near you.

You
can see how I found my great-grandfather’s naturalization records here. 

Other naturalization records how-to resources from Family Tree Magazine include:

• The May
  2008 Family Tree Magazine digital issue, with our article on finding naturalization
  records  (Family
  Tree Magazine Plus members can access
  this article here.)

• Family
  Tree University Tracing Immigrants Independent Study Course download 

• Family
  Tree Essentials CD, with guides to 15 key records including naturalization records