I am going to try to answer some of the questions I saw posted tonight from Estelle and Christine - please all, join me in assistance as I am not an expert and I really think we learn a lot by sharing not only our experience, but our inexperience too. First of all krstnwallce@wwnet.com wanted to know if this was a rare event (Naturalization). I am not sure what you meant Christine, but the Naturalization Papers were probably one of the greatest documents our immigrant ancestors received. These papers confirmed that the individual "be admitted to all the rights, privileges and immunities of A FREE CITIZEN of the United States of America." Also, if you are lucky enough (without having to search pages and pages of microfilm) to know the date of your ancestors Naturalization you can request a copy of it from the Clerk of Court of Newark (assuming they were sworn in there). I am not sure of an Index/Soundex (be careful with Soundex, it is exactly what it says, and may NOT be the exact surname you are looking for), but as to it saying "not much else", this may or may not be the case depending on the clerk recording the information. Some clerks recorded in detail (you find the same thing in the Census records) and others not. HOWEVER, from there you can also estimate the Declaration of Intent date which could tell you exactly were your ancestors were from. If you do not have any idea (in response to Estelle's query) when either one of these things may have happened, you may want to try to track them down by using the Census. Find out the first year they were counted and this will probably be fairly close to the date they declared their intention. Keep in mind that an individual DID NOT have to declare and receive their final papers in the same state, but a lot did due to the residency requirements. Of course, you can always go to one of the search services (although they charge, www.lineages.com is reasonable, however, some limit to what they search) and according to www.essexclerk.com/vault.html the County Clerk's Office in Newark will do a search for a very reasonable fee. Or go to your local Family History Center - or the closest large library you can find. You can order all kinds of records for a small fee from the FHC in microfilm or microfiche and the NARA has a microfilm rental program www.nara.gov/publications/microfilm/micrent.html which you can directly rent through them or through your local library. Dave from Long Island posted an interesting message tonight and I asked for clarification on it as the phrase "Certificate of Arrival" was new to me. I am hoping this will give us all a better clue as to what kind of new information will be out there. Just as a "PS" - In doing research on the Intent and Declaration papers, I found there was one additional step that seems to keep getting mentioned, although I can't figure out exactly what it means. Apparently between the Intent and the Declaration there were the "final papers". I had always thought that these were the Declaration papers, but after reading, I believe the "final papers" were exactly that and the Declaration was the document which was received after swearing allegiance. Can anyone help ME on this? Barbara