Ancestry.com only has papers for primarily the east coast naturalizations. I believe they got most of these from footnote also as they seem to be the same as what is available there. However, They have index cards for several other states. At least if you can find your ancestor in the index, you can then get the right court to send your request to. Too many ancestors applied in one place and ended up naturalized in another place or state entirely. So it's getting easier to track some moves at least. Census records only show every ten years so ancestors could have moved a lot in those years. The index makes it a bit easier to track them.

I noticed that Ancestry had Central PA in their data, whereas Footnote has Eastern and Western PA naturalization records. PA is the only state where I was able find family. I had them settled in the Pittsburgh area and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. I found none in NJ, MI and CT to help me. It is good that they will be posting all of them. This way we will find their Declarations of Intentions and the rest of the documents if they went through the full process. Sometimes they did not. I have seen mentioned on this mail list that they could not get employment unless they had at least filed the Declaration to show intent to stay. Employers did not want to hire people, who were not willing to stay. Why train them to see them return to the old country and have to retrain the newly hired person to replace them. Also I recall someone telling us that the immigrants were handed the Declaration upon entry at the Port to complete with instructions to file it at the courthouse located at their destination. If this is so, many were completed even if they did not go through the entire process or went back to Poland. Tina On 1/20/09, Cynthia <[email protected]> wrote: > > Ancestry.com only has papers for primarily the east coast naturalizations. > I > believe they got most of these from footnote also as they seem to be the > same as what is available there. However, They have index cards for > several > other states. At least if you can find your ancestor in the index, you can > then get the right court to send your request to. Too many ancestors > applied in one place and ended up naturalized in another place or state > entirely. So it's getting easier to track some moves at least. Census > records only show every ten years so ancestors could have moved a lot in > those years. The index makes it a bit easier to track them. > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' > without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >