1. Declaration number, location and name of court   2. Applicant   3. Personal information   4. Spouse's information   5. Last foreign residence, date of emigration, port and date of arrival, name of vessel   6. Signature   7. Date of filing   8. Certificate number

Declaration of Intention to Become a Citizen

Example Information

This example from 1922 includes: Declaration number, location and name of the court Name of the applicant Residence, occupation, age, sex, color, description, nationality, place and date of birth Name of spouse, date and place of marriage, date and place of spouse's birth, spouse's residence, name/date/place of birth of each child Number of any previously filed declaration of intention, date of prior declaration, place of prior filing Last foreign residence, emigrated from, port and date of arrival, name at arrival, date of arrival, name of vessel Signature Date of filing Certificate number

Declaration of Intent

A Declaration of Intention to become a citizen of a colony had to be filed before someone could own land as early as 1740.

On April 14, 1802 the Congress of the United States passed a formal law requiring all aliens who wished to become citizens to report to the clerk of the district court and provide the following information (the clerk had to record the information and grant a certificate to the applicant): "...name, birthplace, age, nation and allegiance, name of the country from whence he or she migrated, and the place of his or intended settlement...."

The term Declaration of Intention came into use with the passage of another naturalization law on March 22, 1816. Filing a declaration has been the first step in becoming a citizen of the United States for nearly 200 years.

Early naturalization laws state clearly the type and amount of information a clerk had to record, butsome clerks left out the piece of information most important to researchers - the village, town, or city of birth. That information appears in every declaration filed after June 29, 1906.

An ancestor could have gone to one of a number of courts to begin the naturalization process. Check the court records in the county or counties where your ancestor is known to have lived over his lifetime.

Many, if not the majority, immigrants came to the United States to become landowners. In their haste to achieve their goal, some immigrants filed their declarations of intent in the county where the ship arrived and then completed the process in the local court where they settled.

Other courts with naturalization records include municipal, district, or federal courts. The LDS Family History Library maintains an excellent collection of county, state, and federal court records.

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