First Papers

It was the tenth day of August, 1916, when John Laskowski got around to filing the first of his immigration papers. He had surely been in the United States for twenty six years by then—at least, that was what the 1900 census had indicated. I could never find the actual documents to reveal when he really arrived in America. Until now.

That was just the thing: the Laskowski family seemed to be one of those immigrant families which had slipped through the cracks. Not in passenger records, nor in immigration indices could I find any trace of the right family. It didn’t help that the head of household, John’s father Anton, had shown up in various records with his given name alternating between Anton and Antoni—and his surname actually shortened, just this one time, to Lasko instead of the usual Laskowski. Still, I had always been up to the task of wild card searches. But with no success.

So when that little prompt came my way this week—a reminder that it was high time to recheck online records for the possibility that the Laskowskis’ number was up—it was a timely tip, indeed.

Although the blog tip had pointed in the direction of new additions to the FamilySearch collections, fortunately, I didn’t stop there. I also wandered over to Ancestry.com to see what I could find. I’m so glad I did—for there, at almost the first hit I found, was an invitation to view “Selected U.S. Naturalization Records—Original Documents, 1790-1974.”

I have to confess: I had that “yeah, sure” attitude as I clicked through to the hint’s source document. There it was, though: John Laskowski’s own records. Not some other guy by the same name. It was him. For sure.

That, in itself, was astounding to me. Do you know how long I’ve paid the price but come away empty handed? That thought, alone, made me stand still and consider the enormity of it all. These things can make one emotional. There is just something about seeing a document that one’s ancestors once touched that evokes a fervent response. The reason I can spot it in others, as I teach beginners’ genealogy classes, is because I’ve felt it, myself. It is real and it is palpable.

There was something more about this discovery. Make that two somethings. The Declaration of Intent divulged the town where John Laskowski was born, and provided the details about his arrival in New York City. That first detail—his place of birth—was something that had eluded me for all these years of research effort. The second detail—when and how he got here—was the bonus, for it provided the next step in this research chain of events we call genealogy. It provided me the key to lead to yet another set of records.

When John Laskowski walked into the office of the Clerk of the Supreme Court of Kings County, New York, I’m sure he had no idea someone would be peering over his shoulder, nearly ninety nine years later. But now, I can read the signature he affixed to the page, duly sworn before the clerk of the court, “So help me God,” declaring

I am not an anarchist; I am not a polygamist nor a believer in the practice of polygamy; and it is my intention in good faith to become a citizen of the United States of America and to permanently reside therein.

I had waited a long time to discover the family’s secret. Now, I was on my way.

Above excerpt from the Declaration of Intent, signed by John Laskowski in Brooklyn, New York, on August 10, 1916, courtesy Ancestry.com.