Family Tutor: Immigration/Naturalization, Oath of Allegiance

1.	Place
2.	Date
3.	Name of person administering oath
4.	Name of ship, its place of departure, the ship's captain, and list number
5.	Signatures of passengers taking the oath of allegiance to the British Crown

List of German Imigrants Taking an Oath
of Allegiance, Philadelphia, 1751

Oath of Allegiance

An oath of allegiance, one of the oldest forms of naturalization, can be an excellent substitute for non-exiting immigration records, especailly during the colonial period.

The example shows the signatures of male immigrants over the age of sixteen who arrived at Philadelphia on the Duke of Wirtenberg and took the oath of allegiance to the king of Great Britain on the 13th of November 1751.

While the document states that the ship came from Rotterdam (a port in Holland) and Cowes (a port in England), the passengers taking the oath were from Germany and Switzerland. Do not assume that a person leaving a European or British port was a citizen of that place. Rotterdam became the port from which most central European nationals departed during the colonial period.

Unlike most other lists compiled by governmental agents or the ship's master, this one includes the signatures of each person taking the oath. These signatures, when compared with those signed to deeds or other documents, can be very helpful in distinguishing an ancestor from others of the same name. If a person could not write, someone signed their name and the passenger made a "mark" between the given and last name. Those marks also can be compared for similarity to the signature blocks on other documents.

Note the absence of the names of women and children on the list. Until the twentieth century, only males were required to take an oath of allegiance. Their spouses and children became citizens automatically when the head of the family took the oath. The names of a spouse and children often did not appear on ship passenger lists made during the colonial period.

Once naturalization laws were passed in the United States, the oath of allegiance became the last step in the process of becoming a citizen.

The list of signatures in the example above came from a collection housed at the Pennsylvania State Archives and reproduced in Ralph B. Strassburger and William J. Hincke. Pennsylvania German Pioneers, vol. 3, (Norristown, PA.: Pennsylvania German Society, 1934).