In Stuck: Immigration, Naturalization and Repatriation in the WWI Era, I’ll tell harrowing tales of families separated by WWI, and the incredible lengths people went to in order to leave war-torn Europe and reunite with relatives in America.
In the years before WWI, husbands immigrated to the USA, intending to send for their family after getting settled, but the outbreak of war turned temporary situations into lengthy separations. Other cases illustrate a short visit to see family in the Old Country morphing into a years-long ordeal.
Both during and particularly after the war, the emergence of new European countries meant new rules and regulations controlling movement and emigration. Simultaneously, panic over an assumed mass influx of war refugees spurred the US Congress to pass restrictive laws that imposed quotas on would-be immigrants.
Ripped from the headstone stories include stolen passports, pleading letters and fake visas – all documented in the US State Department’s Records of Foreign Service Posts.
On 31 January 2024, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a final rule which included decisions on the USCIS Genealogy Program fees. The final rule announced that requests filed online for a Genealogy Program Index Search will drop from $65 to $30. Similarly, Genealogy Program Record Requests filed online will now cost $30 per record. This is a 54% cut in fees to access the historical records held by USCIS. The rule goes into effect on 1 April 2024.
The final rule also explained that Genealogy Program records already digitized will be provided with the results of an Index Search, with no additional fee. Only AR-2 Forms and C-Files created before ca. 1944 have been digitized, and could be provided under this change. Visa Files, Registry Files, high-numbered C-Files, and A-Files all remain in paper form.
As a professional genealogist, one of the hats I wear is as a records access advocate – “records don’t save themselves” – to quote former USCIS historian Marian Smith. On behalf of RecordsNotRevenue.com, which I co-lead, I thank everyone who posted a comment to the Federal Register, or contacted their elected official. This accomplishment would not have happened without the groundswell of support. Grassroots advocacy works!
This ruling by USCIS is a small victory, and much work remains. According to the USCIS website, a Genealogy Program Index Search takes 245 days to process, and a Genealogy Program Record Requests can take up to an astounding 275 days. The rule does not tackle how the Genealogy Program will close the years’-long backlog; address customer service issues; or improve the poor quality of copies of paper files.
Additionally, USCIS must work with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to transfer these historical records to NARA’s custody, where they belong. Due to years of records mismanagement, USCIS remains years behind in transferring its records. Millions of other immigration and naturalization records held by USCIS have yet to be scheduled for transfer, so their status remains in limbo.
In the coming weeks, RecordsNotRevenue.com will refocus its efforts on ensuring the spotlight stays on what happens next to these invaluable records, which tell the story of late 19th- and 20th Century immigration to the United States
I will present The Alphabet Soup of Naturalization Records: Meet the P- File. This talk introduces researchers of 20th Century immigration to the Petition File (P-file), a document created for immigrants who started the naturalization process between 1906 and 1950. P-files come in two distinct versions: P-briefs, and later, more detailed P-files came to be. P-files, created by US Naturalization Examiners for every Petition for Naturalization filed, provide a good deal of information on the applicant: details on the arrival to the USA; place of birth, parents’ names; names of relatives; and often a photograph is found in files created after 1929. These files, available only via FOIA request, are in the custody of USCIS, and scheduled for destruction in 2050. Advocates, including myself, are working to make P-files more accessible and fighting to save them.
Researchers with an interest in immigration and naturalization might be familiar with US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS, formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service, INS) and the Genealogy Program launched back in 2008. What might be less well known was the reason for the creation of the program, which was to provide “a dedicated queue for genealogists, historians and others seeking genealogical and historical records and reference services that generally require no FOIA expertise. As a result, USCIS will provide more timely responses to requests for records of deceased individuals.”
While response times ebbed and flowed during the first decade of the Genealogy Program’s operation, today’s reality demonstrates anything but a timely response. Currently, an Index Search request averages 245 business days for a result. The subsequent Records Request averages an astounding 275 business days to provide record copies.[1] That’s more than two years, start to finish, to obtain records once promised in less than 90 days.[2] Worryingly, more and more people receive correspondence telling them their file cannot be located. Some correspondence to Genealogy Program customers shows their files received extensive FOIA review, exactly what the creation of the program sought to avoid.
Now (January 2023) USCIS proposes changes to the fees for the Genealogy Program, as well as changes to the operational structure of the program. USCIS claims the need for enormous fee hikes reflects the cost to operate the Genealogy Program. It also claims the structural changes “might” improve the wait time to receive records, but only if records have been “previously digitized.”[3]
What the proposed fee hikes will do, if adopted, is certain: make access to historical immigration records unaffordable to most Americans. What the proposed structural changes will do, if adopted, is certain: mislead customers to think that they might receive all the records with one payment of $100. The reality, though, is that only one of the five document types serviced by the Genealogy Program is fully digitized.[4]
Back in 2020, USCIS promised to “transfer more files to NARA [National Archives] in the near future,” [5] yet only a small number of non-historic A-files have transitioned to NARA custody. Many historic files remain inaccessible on warehouse shelves because USCIS’ management of its historic records is quite simply, a mess. Over decades, USCIS put fixing this problem in the “too hard bucket” and now it expects customers to pay the price – up to 269% more than current fees.
These records should be at the National Archives, but it’s not as simple as calling in moving trucks. USCIS seems unwilling or unable to provide NARA the finding aids and index for the records in a usable format.[6] USCIS cannot simply dump records at NARA’s doorstep and expect NARA to fix the problem USCIS created. The resulting stalemate means it is virtually impossible to access records of 20th century immigration.
Speak out! RecordsNotRevenue.com provides all the details on issues of access, efficiency and transparency with the USCIS proposed rule. RecordsNotRevenue.com has suggestions on how to craft a comment, and shows you the steps to take. Join RecordsNotRevenue.com in telling USCIS to get their records management act together. Ask USCIS to present to the public a real plan to fix the two-year (plus!) backlog. Expect USCIS to coordinate with NARA to create a plan to transition these historical records in a manner that makes them serviceable to the public.
The comment period ends 6 March 2023. Visit RecordsNotRevenue.com and take action today!
This graphic illustrates the future if we don’t stop the proposed changes to the USCIS Genealogy Program.
[4] The digitized series, known as Alien Registration forms (AR-2), came into use in 1940. Some Certificate files (C-files) are digitized. All other documents – A-files, Visa Files and Registry Files – would be subject to the $240 per document fee.
[5]U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Fee Schedule and Changes to Certain Other Immigration Benefit Request Requirements, published 3 Aug 2020. https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2020-16389/p-830, accessed 6 January 2023.
No one knows why my grandfather chose Odessa for his place of birth. Like many children who immigrated to the United States at a young age, Max knew little of the place he left behind. Yet unlike his three other immigrant siblings, two older, one younger, he somehow knew something they didn’t – a specific place of birth – Odessa. How Max summoned the name of that fabled city to put on various government documents remains an unsolved mystery.
A scrappy deal-maker, Max would have fit into Moldavanka like a glove. His Prohibition-era experiences would have served him well in the underground markets. His love of being well-dressed, and standing out in a crowd, despite his diminutive size, would have found him strolling Derybasivska on a warm spring evening.
It’s hard to prove a negative, but I’m pretty certain Max was not born in Odessa. His origins are probably in Volhynia, near his father’s city of Novohrad-Volynskyi, or his mother’s town of Sudylkiv. With the essential help of an historian, genealogist and expert on Odessa[1], we scoured the vast archival records of Odessa, marking each Karol birth and death, looking for a connection. We even found a boy named Mordkho[2] born at the right time, with parents who were originally from Volhynia, but those parents, and their patronymics, did not match the names for Max’s mother and father. Maybe they are cousins.
I traveled to Odessa in 2018, taking in the romantic, gritty city on the Black Sea and pondering why my grandfather chose Odessa. I walked to the Brodsky Synagogue, home of the Odessa State Archives and thought about the lives and the secrets held inside. Now I think about the lives and the people trapped in Odessa, and across Ukraine, while this madman wages war from the east.
Historians say write it down now, while the history is happening. To that I say, it’s complicated being two generations removed from a place I’m not from and feeling such strong emotions about it. The branches of my family who left Ukraine are the branches who survived WWII. But Odessa, the place my grandfather never saw, is a place I also chose. And while history is happening, I feel helpless.
It wasn’t easy, but he managed to banish his memories. Then, livening up, he began where he’d left off, telling the Chekists who’d been sent down from Moscow about the life of Froim the Rook, about his shrewdness, his elusiveness, his contempt for his fellow man – all those astounding stories that have receded for ever into the past…
–Isaac Babel, from “Froim the Rook” in Odessa Stories, translated by Boris Dralyuk
…nowhere! I’m going nowhere. But will be speaking at 41st IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, August 1-5, 2021. Check out my live panel presentation, Know Your USCIS Records, with Rich Venezia and Marian Smith, taking place on 3 August from 11:15am – 1:30pm EDT.
The two-hour panel session will introduce researchers to Certificate Files (C-Files), Visa Files and Registry Files, Alien Registration Forms and A-files. We will work to untangle the misinformation and misunderstanding surrounding the records created by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The session will help participants understand the fee-based USCIS Genealogy Program, what might be found duplicated in court records, and what might be at the National Archives. We’ll discuss the content of the records, value to genealogical research, and unclear status regarding preservation and future researcher access. Despite the interest in these records, and advocacy for them, future access to USCIS records remains in jeopardy if the community does not continue to work to protect the records.
I also have an on-demand talk, Three is Not the Magic Number: Better Ways to Add Up Evidence and Improve Analysis. Finding three examples of a piece of information equals a fact is a genealogy myth. This presentation breaks apart the notion of three, and replaces it with using documents to learn definitions of primary and secondary information, original and derivative source documents, and direct and indirect evidence – all part of using the Evidence Analysis Process Map to weigh and analyze the evidence before making a conclusion.
Examples of how the “rule of three” can result in incorrect conclusions will be discussed in case studies, which will also help participants understand how to build research plans, equaling better research, better conclusions and fewer genealogy “do-overs.” The records discussed in this presentation will focus on those easily available for a newer researcher: vital records (birth, marriage, death), headstones, Census records, immigration and naturalization records, Social Security number applications, and military draft cards.
Brickwalls, the figurative ones, exist to torture genealogists. I talk about them a lot. Why they exist, strategies to break them, condolences when it appears the brickwall might stay standing. In early 2021, I presented a virtual talk for the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington, with a focus on methods a hobbyist genealogist can use to get to the next level. I push them to think about how they research, and what they do with the information they find.
In the talk, I point out that just like in real life, our genealogy trees need pruning and routine maintenance. Perhaps incorrect information got added during a late-night research session, or a clue missed on a previously reviewed document. Or maybe a brickwall can be broken with a genealogy “do-over,” because the information needed is now accessible, or more easily available.
Work on one of my brickwalls traces back more than a decade. I wanted to determine the relationship between my great-grandfather, Samuel Brand, and Harry Brandt. Samuel Brand traveled to the United States with Harry’s family, lived with them, and bought a house with Harry. They shared a surname, kind of, but how were they related? Sam was about 18 years younger than Harry. Was Harry an uncle, cousin, much older sibling, or no relation at all?
I needed to know Harry’s father’s name, and the most likely place to find that was on a death certificate or a headstone.
Harry Brandt and his son Aaron vanished from St. Louis about 1913, and I could not figure out what happened to them. Did they go back to Russia? Did they relocate? Another of Harry’s sons moved to Chicago, and I could find a suitable Harry Brandt there, but not with enough information to prove a match. Parts of the family spelled the surname Brand, and I could find men named Harry Brand, too, in St. Louis, Chicago and other locations. But the right one? No clue.
A lot less was available online when I first began work on this problem. I ordered Harry’s naturalization documents from the National Archives in Kansas City, and the copies were sent to me on a DVD. I scoured the St. Louis Public Library’s obituary index, ordering any Brand or Brandt, and the library sent me photocopies in the mail. I visited the St. Louis Recorder of Deeds and using both microfiche and microfilm, got copies of the home ownership papers.[2] I photographed every Brand or Brandt at Chesed Shel Emeth cemetery. I tried to make use of digitized newspapers at Chronicling America, but their OCR search combined with the last name Brand(t) gave me thousands of hits for every advertisement of “Brand Name” or “Brand New” and trying to find Harry in that haystack of hits was not possible.[3]
I traced Harry’s other children, and where they went. I contacted some of their family members. No one knew what happened to Harry. I needed Harry’s father’s name to try and place him within my family’s Brand(t) lines. And I could not find it.
Fast forward to March 2021, and a project I am a part of with a group of other professional genealogists who focus on late 19th and 20th Century immigration to the United States. As part of the effort, we collected examples of naturalizations from different courts around the US. I pulled up Harry’s file, but no new revelations came from reviewing the documents, and a naturalization doesn’t have the one piece of information I needed to include him in the project – his date of death.
I typed Harry’s name into a genealogy database search, wondering if anything new might show up. And there it was. A death certificate in Los Angeles, from 1914, for a man born about 1862, named Harry Brandt. I clicked on the thumbnail to open the image. At first glance, it seemed to be another record that might not give me enough information to form a conclusion, as the name of the informant was helpfully written as “son.” But Box 18 offered literally,
SPECIAL INFORMATION …. Former or Usual Residence: St. Louis
I was on to something. I obtained a photograph of the corresponding headstone, and finally solved this brickwall. Now, I can welcome my great-grandfather Samuel Brand’s older brother, Nachman Tzvi son of Mordechai Leib, to the family.
Figuring this out opens a lot of research doors for this line, but for now I will sit and ponder if the answer had been there all along? Probably not. Genealogy website search engine algorithms are funny things. But why did I decide to check again, and why did it show up right away? Our brains are funny things, too. We see information we might have missed the first time, we interpret and analyze documents differently with fresh eyes. New data is added to genealogy sites daily. It’s hard to keep up, but important to remember that trees need occasional maintenance. A spring cleaning, if you will.
[1] St Louis Recorder of Deeds Archives, 1909, book 2255, page 423.
[2] This was a feat unto itself. A researcher has to start with the name of the present owner of the building, then work their way back in time, from grantee to grantor, charting the numbers of each transaction, until the name of the people in question are located. This information is on microfiche. The numbers located are then used to pull up, on microfilm, the copies of the deeds.
[3] The Library of Congress’ free digitized newspaper collection. This was before any other online newspaper search engines launched.
[4] “California, County Birth and Death Records, 1800-1994,” database and images, FamilySearch. Death Certificate #1778, 1914.
Your family’s name was not changed at Ellis Island. And yet, again and again, the response to that factual statement is a retort of “well, in my family it was.” I understand. No one wants to call their grandparent a liar.
Grandpa said his grandpa was called Schwartz and now our name is Black. It was changed at Ellis Island.
Grandma said our name was Weiss and now it’s White. They were given that name on color day at Ellis Island.
I’ll tell you what is black and white – records. The documents have the facts, which are not always the same as the oral history. Previously, I documented the evolution of the surname on my paternal side. Let’s break down the myth again looking at my maternal line.
Growing up, I was told that this document was my great-grandfather’s steamship ticket – in reality it is an inspection card. The inspection card, issued to immigrants and steerage passengers, was filled out in Southampton, England. It bears the stamp of the US Consulate in Southampton.[1]
This little card provides multiple points for cross-referencing:
the ticket number (upper right – 20600)
the ship and date of departure
last residence
page of the ship manifest (stamped “AA”)
number on the page AA of the ship manifest (5)
and, of course, the name in the center – Solomon Gotcher. That’s not his signature. This was filled out for him. How do I know it’s not his signature? Other documents required his signature, such as his Declaration of Intention to become a US citizen.[2]
But this signature says “Solomon Ketcher” not “Solomon Gotcher.” How did the name change happen?
A look at the ship manifest[3] shows a mirror of the inspection card. Solomon Gotcher appears on sheet AA, line 5, with the ticket number 20600 penciled in. That’s not his signature, either.
How did Solomon get from Gotcher to Ketcher? Well, it was more of a return. In February of 1904, Solomon married in Daugavpils, Latvia.[4] The surname, written in Cyrillic, Кацерь, is underlined. It transliterates to “Katsher,” which is pretty close to Ketcher. And it has nothing to do with Ellis Island, or baseball.
[1] A faded stamp to the right shows he passed inspection in New York.
[2]US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, Declaration of Intentions. Vol 40 p365, 1917 Solomon Ketcher, Declaration 18469, citing St Louis County Library Film 68, FHL Film 1749653.
[3]New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892-1924, database with images, FamilySearch, Roll 473, vol 928-929, 2 Jul 1904-5 Jul 1904; citing NARA publications T715 and M237.
[4] Latvijas Valsts Vēstures Arhīvs, Rīga. Latvijas Ebreju Rabinātu Metriku Grāmatas. Fond 5054, Apraksts 2, Lieta 276, page 15, entry 35.
On 26 March 1945, at 0200 hours, the 89th Infantry Division began crossing the Rhine on its march eastward. Imagine the coordination between the divisions, brigades, battalions, batteries to make this happen. As the crossing began, the 914th Field Artillery Battalion provided support to the 355th Infantry Regiment. The crossings were made near St. Goar and Oberwesel. My great uncle Irwin Carl, a corporal in the 914th Field Artillery Battalion, was there. He was one of 88 men in Battery C, positioned 1500 yards east of Niederburg. [1]
How do I have such detail, down to his exact position? After Action Reports.[2]
After Action Reports typically comprise a narrative, plus S-3 and S-2 Reports and a Unit Journal. The “S” stands for “Staff.” The “3” refers to “Operations,” and the “2” to “Intelligence.” The After Action report is a high-level narrative, written in the weeks after events. It does not give names. For the 914th Field Artillery Battalion, the 10 – 31 March 1945 report was submitted on 1 April 1945.
Reading through the After Action report for 24 – 29 March provides much detail on the Battalion, and each Battery within the Battalion. It details the locations, and exact timing of movements of troops – even the type and amount of ammunition expended.
From reading the primary source material, I know that the Rhine crossing took days – the 914th Field Artillery Battalion, Battery C started crossing at 0130 hours on 28 March 1945 – 48 hours after the first troops headed across – and they finished at 0400 hours on 28 March 1945.
Primary source materials, and drilling down into the details, tells the soldiers’ stories. These documents helped inform this blog post:
Many thanks to Eric S. Van Slander, Archivist at National Archives, College Park, for his assistance locating a mislabeled box, without which this research would not be possible. See also:
[1] Allied Forces. Army Group, 1. E. S. & United States Army. Army Group, 1. H. (1944) HQ Twelfth Army Group situation map: Battle of the Bulge–France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Germany. 26 March 1945. [England?: Twelfth Army Group, to 1945] [Map] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2001628569/, 26 March 2020.
In a past career life, I coordinated diverse groups of non-profits and ran advocacy campaigns, harnessing their collective voice for positive change. When I departed the political sphere, I never thought that I’d return to those roots in order to help keep historical records accessible.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Genealogy Program, keeper of some of the most essential records on 20th century immigrants, has proposed a 492 percent increase in the fees required to search their index and obtain historical records held under their purview. Many of these records should already be publicly accessible. USCIS is essentially holding them hostage, demanding individuals pay exorbitant fees to access documents of our immigrant ancestors.
If approved, fees to access records will start at $240 and could cost up to $625 for a single file. The fees are even more inexplicable when USCIS refers the majority of genealogy record requests to their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) program for processing. If these requests are FOIA requests, researchers should not be paying any fees other than standard FOIA fees.
Everyone should care about the issues involved, even if your research does not include these records. What can be done to one type of records can be done to others. You do not need to be a US resident nor citizen to submit a public comment. Any interested party can make their voice heard.
You can make a difference. Make your voice heard in 3 easy steps:
Step 1: Review the proposed rule here, and jump to the Genealogy Program section here.There’s a summary available at RecordsNotRevenue.com
Step 2: Write your comments, addressing the issues listed here or any issue you think is important. Be sure to mention the Genealogy Program. See these conversation starters for thoughts on how to begin.
Step 3: Send your comments BEFORE 30 DECEMBER 2019 to
Federal Rulemaking Portal and refer to DHS Docket No. USCIS-2019-0010 and follow instructions for submitting comments on the Genealogy Program; and
Send a copy of your comments to your US Senators and Representative, and refer to DHS Docket No. USCIS-2019-0010. Tell them you care about preserving access to federal records!
eastern european mutt 