Steve’s Genealogy Blog

As part of his Petition for Naturalization, Damian Niedzialkowski was required to show that he had arrived in the United States legally. To do this, the U.S. Department of Labor produced a Certificate of Arrival that detailed his entry into the United States.

My Niedzialkowski ancestors lived in Worcester, Massachusetts, and so did two other Niedzialkowski families. After discovering church records in Poland and various civil records in Worcester, I’ve hypothesized that all the Niedzialkowski families in Worcester are related to my own.

Back in October, Gayl Dandurand sent me an email to tell me about the Naturalization Index available through the Albany County, New York Hall of Records. The naturalization records indexed on this site are only for Albany County, New York, but I’ve been able to find several records of interest listed there.
I’ve only begun to search […]

Great Aunt Stephania became of citizen of the United States on March 2, 1944.  By law, she had to complete the naturalization process between two and seven years after filing her Declaration of Intention.  She had filed her Declaration on November 25, 1940, so she was well within the required window of time.
 
Stephania Meleski’s Petition for Naturalization […]

After finding the Original Copy of Great Aunt Stephania’s Declaration of Intention, I moved from the microfilms labeled Naturalization - Declaration of Intention to the films labeled Naturalization - Petition and Record Book.

After I found the Naturalization Index Card for my Great Aunt Stephania, I looked up her Declaration of Intention on a microfilm that contained images of the Original of the three copies of the Declaration that were prepared.  The Original was retained by the clerk, the Duplicate was forwarded to the Bureau of Immigration and […]

While looking for the Naturalization Index Card for my great aunt Stephania Meleski, I happened to look at the very next card after the Naturalization Index Card and found the following card:
 
Change of Name for Stefania Chmielewski
Click on the link for a PDF copy of the Change of Name card.  I had always thought that […]

While looking for my grandmother, Helen Niedzialkowski, in the Naturalization Index, I thought I’d also look for her sister, Stephanie Meleski.  I found the record on the same roll of microfilm as the record for Helen.

Index Card for the Naturalization of Stephania Meleski
Click on the link for a PDF copy of the Index Card for Stephania.  The […]

My grandmother, Helen Niedzialkowski, became a citizen of the United States on June 12, 1953, forty years after she arrived in the country.  I’m not sure what inspired her to become a citizen after all those years, especially since her husband, Kostanty, became a citizen in 1940.
In July, while I was at the Massachusetts Archives, […]

Great Aunt Mary’s birthdate is either January 12, 1884 or March 12, 1887, depending on whether one consults the documents generated prior to her immigration or the documents generated after her arrival in the United States.
One nagging question, however, is:  are the birth/baptismal certificate, the Hamburg Emigration List, and the Ellis Island Passenger Arrival List for […]