There is a lot in the news these days about immigration, citizenship, rights of non-citizens, etc. This is a conversation that raises a lot of genealogical questions for me. I am not here to discuss the current state of affairs but rather glean some information about generations past.
Everytime I hear a news story about our immigration woes I find I am thinking about my great-grandparents. Most of my relations have been in America since revolutionary times, have a historical presence, fought in wars, helped build universities, etc. except for my mother’s paternal grand-parents. That is where the questions come up. I know I will have to do some research to suss out the rules and regulations at the time but I thought I would throw it out just in case anybody had any insight.
Because my father’s family’s genealogy had been done I started with my mother’s grandparents who immigrated from Wales late in the 19th century. In genealogical circles they are called “new immigrants”. I was always interested in my great-grandparents from Wales because we didn’t know much about them (closed mouth grandfather) and we didn’t know them because we were in Texas and they were in Pennsylvania although my mother did travel to see them when she was tiny — too tiny to remember anything about it except large icicles hanging from the roofs in Scranton, PA. So, there was interest in a different locale, different weather, different accents, different birthplaces — just different. And I was curious so that is where I began my genealogical journey.
I began learning about my great-grandparents before my mother passed away and she was able to give me some information. She always told me that they came on a ship (really Mom? I assumed) and that they came to Scranton and nothing really changed other than their zip code. Their lives pretty much continued in the US as it did in Wales — they lived in a Welsh-heavy community, they went to a Welsh Baptist church, they sang in Welsh American choirs — my great-grandmother even had a cottage garden, like she did back home as family lore shared.
I was also told that they never became citizens which is evidenced on census records where they are consistently listed as “Al” on citizenship. They came with three children, a boy who never married and two girls. The girls married American citizens and became citizens through their husbands.
My great-grandparents went on to have several more children here in the US including my grandfather — a first generation American. I assume that by being born here he was a US citizen — I don’t ever remember hearing it being questioned. But I have a question —
Did he have dual citizenship - was he also a Welsh citizen, a British subject, could he live in Britain with the same rights and privileges as a British born person by way of his parents?
I remember my mother had questions as well because she told me of a story that when her grandmother passed away her father received a document to sign that had ribbons and fancy writing on it (she was still a child so I don’t think she perused the paper) and she thinks it came from the UK. We don’t know what it was, if it actually came from the UK or actually what it was at all. There doesn’t seem to be a way to find out because I can’t find any record of a will for my great-grandmother.
So, my question is, does anybody know of past citizenship rules? They came in 1890 and she passed in 1937 so it isn’t like it was a terribly long time ago.
I guess I need to do some more research. Sigh.
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