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:

NAME BIRTH DATE BIRTH TOWN BIRTH COUNTRY OCCUPATION
BONDI, ONOFRIO G. 6/13/1888 BIVONA ITALY TAILOR[CUTTER}
DELIA, ANTHONY 6/27/1904 BIVONA ITALY SHOP WORK
GIAMBRONE, JOSEPH 6/18/1904 BIVONA ITALY BUTCHER
GILARDO, JIUSEPPE 2/14/1877 BIVONA ITALY LABORER
MILITELLO, CARMELO 5/14/1871 BIVONA ITALY LABORER
PADRONAGGI [PADRONAGGIO], PETER 3/1/1891 BIVONA ITALY LABORER
PINTO, MARIA 9/24/1906 BIVONA ITALY LAMPSHADE MAKER
PIRRONE, CARMELO 8/2/1869 BIVONA ITALY MARBLE CARVER
SARDELLA, SAM C. 3/29/1889 BIVONA ITALY TAILOR
SIRENO, SAVERIO 10/7/1891 BIVONA ITALY LABORER
TRAINA, CARMELO 1/13/1878 BIVONA ITALY LABORER
TRAINA [TRANIA], GUISEPPE 10/15/1872 BIVONA, SICILY ITALY LABORER
VASILE, CARMELO 7/8/1878 BIVONA ITALY LABORER
VASILE, CARMELO 7/8/1878 BIVONA ITALY LABORER
VASILE, GUISEPPE 2/27/1874 BIVONA ITALY LABORER

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