For those of you who are searching the naturalization records and are trying to find out where your ancestors are, this article may have some points for you to consider. Good Luck and Happy Hunting Carol Gabriel List Admin Naturalizations with an Insight to History - Juliana Smith This week I actually found some time to explore the New York Naturalization Petition Index at Ancestry.com. What started as a search for my ancestors evolved into an exploration of the times in which they lived and the political climate of mid-nineteenth-century New York. My first search was for some of my Tobin ancestors and while I'm not sure if I have my third-great-grandfather Thomas, I'm fairly certain that I have found his brother, Peter C. Tobin. As with many of the index cards, not all the fields were filled in, but along with the naturalization date, it contained Peter's address, 446 Water St., New York City, and gave one William B. Tobin with the same address as his witness. At this point the choirs of angels burst into song and I joined them in singing the Hallelujah Chorus--for it would appear I had found a new family member to research! My husband passed my office and discreetly shut the door. No need to scare the child, it's just that genealogy thing again. Included on the card is also the bundle and record number that is needed to request a copy of the petition from the National Archives in New York City. While the information on naturalization records from this period is typically scant, I will request them anyway in the hopes there are some surprises. With the few pieces of information on the card, I found additional clues. Besides finding the witness bearing the same surname and living at the same address, locating Peter at the time of his naturalization is a find. I need to start checking directories and censuses for William at that address and see if I can locate Peter in the process. Since one of the requirements for naturalization was residence in the U.S. for five years, in some cases, the date of naturalization (30 October 1846), also given on the card, can help in narrowing down dates of immigration. However, this was not always the case. (More on that later.) On to the Huggins Family After my little voyage through history, I was still hungry for more ancestors, so I began looking for another ancestor, William Huggins. A search for only the surname Huggins turned up fourteen hits, three of which included the given name William. On the first one I checked, dated 11 October 1849, I found a possible link. From a timeline I created for the Huggins family, I had estimated that they arrived some time during the early 1840s based on ages and places of birth found in the census. Again, details were scant, but the witness name, Michael Meehan, rang a bell. I had seen that name before and as I browsed through my binder, I found the list of sponsors for William's children's baptisms. The sponsor for his daughter, Anne Huggins in 1844, was listed as Michl. Mehan. Since there were not too many Huggins records, I went through the entire list looking for any clues that may connect one of the other families to mine and found a couple possibilities: Thomas Huggins, naturalized 11 October 1856, witness W. Huggins John Huggins, naturalized 23 October 1856, witness Michael Mehand That's where it hit me. There were a whole lot of October naturalizations. In fact, of the fourteen Huggins records, eight took place in October, as did the record for Peter Tobin. A quick look at newspapers for the year of each October record and I was able to determine that they all fell in election years, with three of them falling in 1856. Now for Some History... At this point I was obsessed. I remembered reading that the politicos sometimes "helped" immigrants through the naturalization process in courting their votes. In They Became Americans: Finding Naturalization Records and Ethnic Origins, I found the following: "Politicians were quick to recognize the collective voting strength of naturalized citizens. Political parties went to great lengths to court immigrants from the moment they arrived on American soil. In New York City, newcomers were met at the boat. A 'naturalization bureau' was set up to advise and assist aliens in filling out naturalization papers. 'It was common knowledge that many of these adopted citizens voted before they had fulfilled the federal residence requirement of five years.'...An 1845 congressional committee investigating naturalization frauds reported that 'in New York, New Orleans, and Philadelphia it was a common practice on the eve of elections for immigrants, many of them not yet qualified by residence, to be naturalized in droves at the instigation of the political machines.'" (p. 29) The footnotes for this paragraph cited another book that I have, Immigrant Life in New York City, 1825-1863. In it I read that "newly arrived immigrants who promised to vote for [Mayor Fernando] Wood were sent to the courts with orders reading: 'Please naturalize the bearer.'" I spent a little more time browsing through some of the books I've collected on New York immigrants and surfed the Web a bit for more information. There is a lot of interesting information available on this turbulent period of New York history. One website I found, Urbanography, 1857: A Year to Forget, delved deeper into Mayor Wood's term of office and problems with his police force, led by Superintendent George W. Matsell, who is the subject of today's Clipping of the Day. For those of you with access to the Historical Newspaper Collection, there is much more in the complete article and it gives an interesting look at the probe of his citizenship in 1856. This really brought everything home. In one evening, just in searching for two families, I found further connections to investigate, clues to locating ancestors and more information on them, and had an interesting look at the mid-nineteenth century political landscape that my ancestors not only witnessed, but in which they apparently were, wittingly or unwittingly, participants, and all from the comfort of home. Yes, life is good. Hit it, angels! Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ... References Ancestry.com. "New York Petitions for Naturalization, 1792-1906." [database online]. Provo, Utah: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2004. Christiano, Gregory. "Urbanography, 1857: A Year to Forget." [article online]. Ernst, Robert. Immigrant Life in New York City, 1825-1863. (Syracuse University Press, 1994). Szucs, Loretto Dennis. They Became Americans: Finding Naturalization Records and Ethnic Origins. (Provo, Utah: Ancestry, 1998). Juliana Smith is the editor of the Ancestry Daily News and author of The Ancestry Family Historian's Address Book. She has written for Ancestry Magazine and Genealogical Computing. Juliana can be reached by e-mail at [email protected], but she regrets that she is unable to assist with personal research. Copyright 2004, MyFamily.com.