For those who don’t know, naturalization is the process where an immigrant, or non-citizen can legally apply for citizenship.
However, gaining citizenship in the United States was an ever changing exercise, especially for women. Up until the late nineteenth century simply marrying a U.S. citizen was enough for a woman to be granted citizenship. Yet, remarkably a woman could also lose her status as a United States citizen if she married a foreign born alien. After 1922, a woman’s quest for naturalization was her own and not so directly tied to the citizen status of her spouse.
Want to know more about researching your female ancestors using naturalization records? Click here for an amazing article written by Marian L. Smith on the subject. The Archives also have several guides for using naturalization records, histories on the naturalization process and the naturalization records for Champaign County dating back to the 1860s.
Lara, Archives Assistant