13 August 2012

A Rock Island Naturalization

FamilySearch recently released a significant addition to their collection of county naturalization records for Illinois to their site. At this point in time, the records are unindexed, so users will need to search them old-fashioned way, volume by volume. Many of these materials most likely have an index in the front (or back) of each volume, so page by page searches are not always necessary.

Sometimes there are other indexes as well. In the case of these records, the Soundex Index to Naturalization Petitions for the United States District and Circuit Courts, Northern District of Illinois and Immigration and Naturalization Service District 9, 1840-1950 (National Archives microfilm M1285) indexes the records for Rock Island County, Illinois--and other counties as well. This microfilm is available digitally at Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.

The card for Charles Mortier is shown in the image below:


The "V-9 P-227" indicates that the Mortier naturalization appears on page 227 of volume 9 and was dated 27 March 1906.

Using that information, the naturalization for Mortier was easily located as shown below on FamilySearch.


Using card index made the research easier. A search of one volume after another was not impossible, but the index did facilitate locating this naturalization record.