{"id":109,"date":"2006-05-15T15:47:58","date_gmt":"2006-05-15T22:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/15\/certificates-of-citizenship\/"},"modified":"2016-10-16T18:05:01","modified_gmt":"2016-10-17T01:05:01","slug":"certificates-of-citizenship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/109","title":{"rendered":"Certificates of Citizenship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday’s entry completed the story of my grandfather’s immigration and naturalization experiences, but I didn’t post the\u00c2\u00a0Certificate of Naturalization of Kostanty Niedzialkowski<\/a> (clicking on the link above will bring up a PDF file, and clicking on the image below will bring up a JPG file).<\/p>\n

\"Kostanty<\/a><\/p>\n

So, Kostanty became a citizen of the United States, but what about his wife, Helen?<\/p>\n

Through history, the way in which women acquired citizenship in the United States has changed several times.<\/p>\n

After passage of the Act of February 10, 1855<\/a>, an\u00c2\u00a0alien woman acquired citizenship simply by marrying a citizen.<\/p>\n

The Naturalization Act of 1906<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0decided that when a man became a citizen, his wife and minor children also became citizens (derivative citizenship).<\/p>\n

The Immigration Act of 1907<\/a> required that a woman who married an alien or a married woman whose husband became a citizen of another country lost her citizenship in the United States .\u00a0 This Act did not apply during World War I.<\/p>\n

The passage of the Nineteenth Amendment<\/a> to the Constitution of the United States guaranteeing women the right to vote was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919 and ratified on August 18, 1920 .\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Now, for the first time, women actually had a reason to become a citizen .\u00a0 Two years after the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, the Cable Act of 1922<\/a> repealed the provisions of the Immigration Act of 1907 whereby women lost their citizenship through marriage .\u00a0 In addition, a woman no longer automatically became a citizen when her husband did.<\/p>\n

Consequently, my grandmother, Helen (Chmielewska) Niedzialkowski, did not acquire derivative naturalization when Kostanty became a citizen .\u00a0 She had to go through the whole process herself .\u00a0 I haven’t yet obtained all of her papers, but I do have a copy of the Index Card to the Naturalization Records of Helen Niedzialkowski<\/a>, which\u00c2\u00a0states her Petition Number (46714) and\u00c2\u00a0her\u00c2\u00a0Alien Registration Number (3179566) .\u00a0 This information provides me with enough information to order a copy of these documents from the Bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services<\/a> .\u00a0 I also have a copy of the\u00c2\u00a0Certificate of Naturalization\u00c2\u00a0of Helen Niedzialkowski<\/a> (clicking on the link above will bring up a PDF file, and clicking on the image below will bring up a JPG file).<\/p>\n

\"Helen<\/a><\/p>\n

For an interesting article\u00c2\u00a0on\u00c2\u00a0Immigration and Naturalization Laws affecting women, see “Any woman who is now or may hereafter be married . . .” Women and Naturalization, ca. 1802-1940\u00c2\u00a0in the Summer 1998<\/a> issue of Prologue<\/em> Magazine, a publication of the National Archives and Records Administration.<\/p>\n

Finally, here’s a little snippet of information you can toss into the conversation the next time you’re having dinner with a group of genealogists:\u00a0 Ellis Island was named\u00c2\u00a0after a land developer, Samuel Ellis,\u00a0who bought the island in 1782.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2006 by Stephen J. Danko<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday’s entry completed the story of my grandfather’s immigration and naturalization experiences, but I didn’t post the\u00c2\u00a0Certificate of Naturalization of Kostanty Niedzialkowski (clicking on the link above will bring up a PDF file, and clicking on the image below will … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[100],"tags":[214],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-niedzialkowski","tag-naturalization"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pyBfX-1L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20532,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/20532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}