GENEALOGY NOTES
When Saying “I Do”
Meant Giving Up Your
U.S. CITIZENSHIP
By Meg Hacker
In line for a mar-
riage license, undated.
With an act of 1907,
women lost their U.S.
citizenship when they
married a foreigner.
They had to reap-
ply for naturalization.
Below: Amelia Pizani
Westphal explained
the reason for her ap-
plication in 1942.
N
estled among the records from almost every fed-
eral court in America is a small body of records
documenting women swearing allegiance to the
United States—to be more accurate, re-swearing their
allegiance. When the massive amount of naturalization
records in the National Archives present similar infor-
mation—people pledging loyalty to America—what is
special about this group?
e women in these records were all born in America. Some most like-
ly never left this country, let alone their hometown, and yet they were
swearing allegiance back to the United States. Why would these women
not already be considered American?
Since the earliest days of our nation, millions of people have gone
through the process of becoming a U.S. citizen. Naturalization is a
choice, not a requirement, and no rule mandates that one must complete
the naturalization process once it has been started. ere is also no regu-
lation promising the reinstatement of one’s lost American citizenship.
At certain times in our country’s history, marriage—at least for the
woman—could affect one’s citizenship status. If an American woman
married a foreigner before 1907 and the married couple continued to
reside in the United States, she did not, because of her marriage, cease to
be an American citizen. e American woman remained a U.S. citizen
even after her marriage to a non-U.S. citizen.
An act of March 2, 1907, also known as the Expatriation Act, changed
all this. Congress mandated that “any American woman who marries
a foreigner shall take the nationality of her husband.” Upon marriage,
regardless of where the couple resided, the woman’s legal identity morphed
into her husband’s.
Spring 2014
If a (former) American woman’s alien husband became
a naturalized U.S. citizen after the marriage, she would
regain her citizenship through the very husband with
whom she had lost it. If the same woman wanted her
American citizenship restored, and her husband had not
naturalized, she had to go through the entire naturaliza-
tion process as a true immigrant, with all of its standard
rules and regulations.
Even then, she was still tethered to her husband through
his political or legal standing. If the United States, for
whatever reason, would not grant him citizenship, it would
not extend any repatriation opportunities to his wife.
is inequity in citizenship rights prompted Ohio
Congressman John L. Cable to act. He sponsored leg-
islation to give American women “equal nationality and
citizenship rights” as men.
e Cable Act (also known as the “Married Women’s
Independent Nationality Act” or the “Married Women’s
Act”) passed on September 22, 1922, and repealed the
1907 Expatriation Act.
An American woman who married a non-U.S. citi-
zen after September 22, 1922, would no longer lose
her citizenship if her husband was eligible to become a
citizen. e Cable Act was great news for couples mar-
rying after 1922.
Cable Act Confusing
For Some Women
But what about women who had already lost their citi-
zenship—what could they do? ey would still have to
follow the full standard naturalization process.
e Cable Act’s restrictions caused some confusion.
A wife’s citizenship status no longer changed auto-
matically upon the husband’s naturalization—in fact, it
did not change at all. Some women who had married
before passage of the act understandably believed they
had either never lost their citizenship in the first place or
assumed that they held the same status as their husbands
(and, no doubt, children).
After 1922, women who thought they had lost citi-
zenship by marriages due to the 1907 act had to file a
petition for naturalization if they wished to regain it.
To learn more about
• Women in naturalization records, go to www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1998/summer/.
• Locations of and contact information for National Archives research facilities nationwide, go to www.archives.gov/locations/.
• Naturalization records in the National Archives, go to www.archives.gov/research/naturalization/.
The Cable Act of 1922 al-
lowed women to repatriate
or reapply for their citizen-
ship. Betty Mundy certies
her continuous residence in
Florida in her application re-
corded December 20, 1922,
58 Prologue
Left: Martha Empey’s
July 1939 application
for an oath of allegiance
lists the documents she
submitted, including
her birth and marriage
certicates and a copy
of her divorce decree.
Right: Yetta Ostrovsky
applied to take the oath
of allegiance under the
act of 1936. She lost her
citizenship through mar-
riage to a Russian na-
tional in Florida in 1919
despite the fact that
she had “resided con-
tinuously” in the United
States since her birth.
A woman’s suitability for citizenship still depended on
her husband’s status—he had to be “eligible” whether he
wanted to swear allegiance or not.
e act did not affect expatriated woman who had for-
mally renounced their citizenship by personally appear-
ing before a U.S. court. Nor did it affect women who
had become naturalized under the laws of another coun-
try. In these cases, she remained a citizen of the other
country. American men who expatriated themselves by
swearing an allegiance to another nation during World
War I had it easier—they only had to file an oath of al-
legiance to restore their U.S. citizenship.
e changing laws could cause unexpected citizenship
flip-flopping. John Henry Pengally arrived in New York
in 1914 from England and started his naturalization pro-
cess in 1916. According to his naturalization papers, he
divorced his first wife in 1919 and married Bertha Anna
Haak (born in Bayside, New York) sometime thereafter.
Bertha Anna, upon this marriage, became a British subject.
John Henry finally naturalized in September 1923—
but what was the status of Bertha Anna? Because of the
Cable Act, she remained a British citizen who happened
to be married to an American citizen. Two years later,
Bertha Anna naturalized and became a United States
citizen.
Another obstacle faced women who wanted to reclaim
their American citizenship. e Cable Act permitted a
woman who was living abroad and lost her citizenship
due to the 1907 act to return to the United States to
regain her citizenship. Due to the 1924 Immigration
Quota Law, however, she would have to return to the
United States as a quota immigrant. If the quota for her
husband’s country had been exhausted for that year, she
could not get a visa and therefore could not return to the
United States to repatriate.
A series of bills introduced in 1931 removed the re-
maining inequalities of the 1922 act: the ineligible
spouse clause and the foreign residency issues.
When Saying “I Do”
Prologue 59
1940 Law: All Women
Can Regain Citizenship
An act of 1936 provided marital expatriates—whose
marriages to aliens had ended through death or di-
vorce—with an opportunity to regain their lost citizen-
ship by filing an application. Upon approval, women
could resume citizenship simply by taking an oath of
allegiance. is act required the proof of her U.S. birth
or naturalization as well as proof that the marriage had
ended. Women flocked to the courts to file their appli-
cations. Women involved in ongoing marriages contin-
ued to file the regular paperwork for naturalization until
1940.
e act of July 2, 1940, provided that all women who
had lost citizenship by marriage could repatriate regard-
less of their marital status. ey only had to take an oath
of allegiance—no declaration of intention was required.
But they still had to show that they had resided continu-
ously in the United States since the date of the marriage.
How do you find these records? Since women could
repatriate at any court—county, state, or federal—the
records could be anywhere. Some of the federal court
records have even been digitized and are available on
National Archives partner sites: Ancestry.com, Fold3.
com, and FamilySearch.org.
Repatriation records that have not been digitized are
found among the naturalization records in Records of
District Courts of the United States, Record Group 21.
e records cover the years 1939–1981 and are housed
at National Archives locations across the country (a list
of them is on the inside back cover of this magazine).
e courts often kept the repatriation oaths separate
from other naturalization records, and when they did,
the series titles usually include the word “repatriation.”
Examples of series titles include Applications to Regain
Citizenship and Repatriation Oaths, Naturalization
Repatriation Applications, Naturalization Repatriation
Proceedings, Repatriation Cases, Naturalization
Repatriations of Native Born Citizens, Repatriation
Orders, Repatriation Case Record, Repatriation
Certificates, and Repatriate Oaths of Allegiance.
Once all of the repatriation oaths are digitized and up-
loaded onto our partner sites, searching for these women
should become much easier. Until then, keep in mind
that the federal courts across the nation maintained repa-
triation oaths in different ways: separately with an index;
separately without an index; combined with all of the
naturalization records with an index; or combined with
all of the naturalization records without an index.
If you believe your ancestor repatriated and you can-
not locate her on our online partner sites, contact the
National Archives research facility responsible for the
state in which your ancestor resided.
P
Meg Hacker, a Prologue contributing editor, has
been with the National Archives at Fort Worth since
1985 and is now Director of Archival Operations
there. She received her B.A. in American history
from Austin College and her M.A. in American History from Texas
Christian University. Texas Western Press published her thesis, Cynthia
Ann Parker: e Life and the Legend.
Author
Opposite: Marion
Steed’s petition
for naturalization
provides useful
family informa-
tion as well as
her claim that
she lost her U.S.
citizenship when
she voted in an
election in Sus-
sex, England, in
July 1945.
The best place to start a search for women’s repatriation records is online. Several series of
records have been digitized and can be found in the National Archives Online Public Access
catalog and on our partner websites Ancestry.com, FOLD3.com, and FamilySearch.org.
Keep in mind that the different sites will have different sets of records. On Ancestry, select
the search category “immigration and travel.” On Fold3, select “non-military collections,”
and then “naturalization petitions (1700–mid 1900s). On FamilySearch, you can choose a
filter by collection after you have typed in the person’s name and dates.
All of these online sources continually add material, so it helps to check regularly.
When Saying “I Do”
Prologue 61
