Are You A Citizen?

I joined a genealogy group on Facebook. It is the Chicago Genealogy Group. My grandfather Smith was from Chicago, so I have done a fair amount of research in this part of the world. So, I get emails from members of this group when they post.

So, this week I read a very interesting post by a man. He has a genealogy blog and wrote a post about his grandmother. This is how the story goes... His grandmother was born in Chicago in 1897. Of course, she was a US citizen. But here is where the story goes wrong. His grandmother falls in love with a man born in Canada, who had since moved to Chicago, where the two met. They decide to get married but he had not yet begun the process of obtaining US citizenship. This might not seem like it would pose a problem for the grandmother except for one crazy law. In 1907 there was a federal law put into place that stated that a woman would lose her US citizenship if she married an alien (a non US citizen). CRAZY!

Well, the grandmother was young and in love, so she forfeited her US citizenship and married the alien from Canada in 1918. Her husband ended up becoming a US citizen in 1922. But, not so for the grandmother, she had to wait until 1940 when Congress magnanimously decided that it was time to give these women back their US citizenship. So, in 1940 the grandmother took the US Oath of Allegiance and legally became again a citizen of a country she had always been a citizen of.

Last note, a non-native born woman became a US citizen either when her husband did or when she married a US citizen. This law was in place until 1922.