Fred (and others) You can see that the links are broken. Copy and paste them to your browser and they should work fine. But the first two items in the link that you found are the correct articles. Ray -----Original Message----- From: Fred [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, January 14, 2011 7:43 PM To: 'Ray Marshall'; [email protected]; 'Kerry List' Subject: RE: [IRL-KERRY] question abt. naturalization, c. early 1840's Ray, Thank you for that helpful information. Neither of the links will take you directly to the items but doing a search produced http://search.archives.gov/query.html?qt=women+and+naturalisation&submit=GO& col=1arch&col=social&qc=1arch&qc=social Which I think is what you referred to. Can you confirm this is the case please. Kind regards in warm and humid NSW with no floods or indeed rain. Fred .. And you are welcome here but only if you are prepared to help in breaking down the Richard Hickson brick wall. Have a cool day. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Marshall Sent: Saturday, 15 January 2011 11:26 AM To: [email protected]; Kerry List Subject: Re: [IRL-KERRY] question abt. naturalization, c. early 1840's Marybeth Here are two articles from the National Archives (US) web page that shows the complexity of the issue). http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1998/summer/women-and-naturali zation-1.html http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1998/summer/women-and-naturali zation-2.html In general, women assumed the citizenship of their husband in the days before women received the right to vote. If they travelled by themselves, they would remain an "alien" until they married a US citizen. But some states might have let them vote in school or municipal elections. And if he died or they divorced and she remarried a non-citizen, she (and the children) would assume the citizenship of the new husband. But it is more complex than that so check those two articles. "Unless a woman was single or widowed, she had few reasons to naturalize prior to the twentieth century. Women, foreign-born or native, could not vote. Until the mid-nineteenth century, women typically did not hold property or appear as "persons" before the law. Under these circumstances, only widows and spinsters would be expected to seek the protections U.S. citizenship might afford. One might also remember that naturalization involved the payment of court fees. Without any tangible benefit resulting from a woman's naturalization, it is doubtful that many women or their husbands considered the fees to be money well spent." ---------------------- "Happily, Congress was at work and on September 22, 1922, passed the Married Women's Act, also known as the Cable Act. This 1922 law finally gave each woman a nationality of her own. No marriage since that date has granted U.S. citizenship to any alien woman nor taken it from any U.S.-born women who married an alien eligible to naturalization.(11) Under the new law women became eligible to naturalize on (almost) the same terms as men." Ray Marshall Where it is still snowing and I'm very tired of it in Minneapolis. Anybody have a spare bedroom so I can move south for three months? <GR> ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 10.0.1191 / Virus Database: 1435/3379 - Release Date: 01/14/11