Is there a way to find out if a person became a US citizen?

Question

My grandmother came to the USA from England in 1919. She went to Erie,Pa and was last known to be in New York ,were she seemed to disappear. Is there a way to find out if she became a US citizen?Or is there a way to find out if she remarried or were she might be buried?

Answer 1

Naturalization and resident alien records are available on Ancestry.com (but are not necessarily immediately discernable), or at least that was the case in two instances in my own family's history: 1) A great grandfather, a native of Canada, became an American citizen in 1916; he entered the country around 1880. 2) An ancestor, who was a native of Scotland, and who entered the United States around 1790, was listed as a resident alien during the War of 1812. His son, incidentally, served under Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans.

Since your grandmother immigrated to the US about the end of World War I, you might check to see if she had resident alien status.

Answer 2

The 1920 and 1930 censuses have a column asking whether a person was naturalized (became a citizen). The abbreviations used are: Na=Naturalized, Pa=First Papers Filed, and Al=Alien. So you might start your search with the census records. This guide might also be helpful:

Finding US Naturalization Records (a genealogy guide)
http://home.att.net/~wee-monster/naturalizationrecords.html

And this article on women and naturalization from INS historian, Marian Smith, may be useful to you:
http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1998/summer/women-and-naturalization-1.html

Answer 3

The answers to all of your questions are "MAYBE".

Yes, Immigration and Naturalization records are public record and you can get a copy of them. BUT, you need to know her name at the time of naturalization and her date of birth to get them.

MAYBE you can find out if she remarried, but it would depend on the year. If she remarried after 1934, you can't always get the records. It also depends on which state it was. Some are more organized than others on the more modern records. New York is not always an easy state to research if you're looking outside of NYC.

You can find out where she's buried if you can find out where she died. Finding her will depend on whether she kept her same name that you know, or if she remarried.

If you want to post what you know about her, we'd be happy to help you look. No promises, but there would be some hope of finding her.

Answer 4

Your parent doesn't know what became of the mother? Have you checked at Erie for Canada crossings? Where in NY? It sounds like you have many avenues left to check out.

Answer 5

How do you search if a person is still a US citizen?

Answer 6

Build your family tree.