Many genealogists look to try to “jump the ocean” over to the old country when they reach the beginnings of their American ancestry. A great way to do this is through immigration records – it gives you an idea of where your ancestor was from.
Illinois has a great resource with the Cook County Clerk of the Court. Cook county contains Chicago, so many immigrants were naturalized there. If you have a midwestern immigrant ancestor, chances are they were naturalized here.
This database is “extra awesome” because it lets you search by town, as well. For example, some of my human’s ancestors were from Bivona, Italy. Searching for that I get:
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Interestingly, I know most of these last names. The site lets you click on a name to pull up more priceless information.
Record Details for Volume 263 | |
Page Number: | 230 |
Declaration Number: | 129430 |
FIRST NAME | LAST NAME | OCCUPATION |
CARMELO | MILITELLO | LABORER |
BIRTH CITY | BIRTH COUNTRY | BIRTH DATE |
BIVONA | ITALY | 5/14/1871 |
CURRENT ADDRESS | CURRENT CITY | |
NOT GIVEN | LEMONT | |
DEPARTURE LOCATION | ARRIVAL DATE | DECLARATION DATE |
PALERMO, ITALY | 5/5/1903 | 3/8/1922 |
And if you wanted to, you could look at the actual record. However declarations of intention were kind of boring, as they were basically index cards containing the above information. The naturalization records, however, are amazing and usually contain a photograph!
Mucho Fishies,
BK
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