To Trace the Family's Route

 

Where to find pre-1906 American naturalization records? I go online, naturally. In the case of the Blaising family's arrival some time between 1866 and 1868—the two dates reported by some of Theresa Blaising's brothers in census records—their records could have been filed anywhere, as there was no central federal office overseeing the process then. If the Blaising family had traveled directly to Allen County, Indiana, where we have already found them by 1870, their naturalization records could have been filed at the county courthouse there, or at any of five different possible court systems within the state's jurisdiction. If they stopped somewhere else on the way to their ultimate destination in New Haven, Indiana, the paperwork could have been begun at that other location.

In order to trace the family's route from France—my goal in finding naturalization records—I might first have to trace their route after arriving from France. With that uncertainty, rather than hunt through records at FamilySearch.org or any of the genealogical companies with such digitized records, I took my search straight to a search engine, seeking naturalization records at the state level. I entered Indiana as my first choice, held my breath, and pressed enter.

Fortunately, a promising entry popped up at the top of the list at Google. It was a page from the Indiana GenWeb site for Allen County, which provided links for accessing the very items I was seeking. Taking my cue from that information, I followed the link to the Allen County Genealogical Society website, where an alphabetized index of naturalization records from the Indiana Archives and Records Administration provided clickable sub-headings. I clicked on "Bl" for Blaising, and presto, I was there, scrolling past eight entries for "Black" to reach the next surname, Blaising.

There, the record provided the person's name, age at time of filing, and the date of the document. A fourth column was labeled, "link."

I wasted no time getting to that next step.

On that new page, actually hosted on the Indiana Archives site, once again I was asked to enter the immigrant's first name and last name. There were also fields to fill in for keyword and organization name, which I left blank. I discovered that it was best to not enter the requested field for "search by county," as when I did enter Allen County, I'd get zero results, but if left blank, the person I was seeking would be served up, no questions asked.

At that point, if more than one person had filed with that same name, all possible entries would be shown, requiring me to make a selection. This might be helpful for reviewing all possibilities to avoid the risk of following the wrong name twin. In the case of one of the Blaising brothers, John, I ran into that case, though our John did include his middle initial.

Clicking on the name selected then produced a drop-down window with a transcription of the basic information. While I was happy to have found that with relatively little effort, I was disappointed that there wasn't further information. Besides the immigrant's name, age, and county of filing, the record gleaned the date of arrival and document date. In addition, the synopsis listed the country of origin: France.

Of course, I wanted more. Perhaps because of that disappointment, I felt placated to see under that perfunctory listing, a blue link with those welcome words, "More detail."

I clicked.

The result yielded a full page listing of that immigrant's record. In the case of the Blaising brothers, I was able to learn that each of them left from the port at Le Havre in northern France, and sailed to New York City. My next step, then, will be to search for passenger records there, though one interesting discovery was that some of the brothers reported different dates of arrival, suggesting the possibility of serial immigration.

In finding these excerpts from the naturalization records, the good news was that the full page entry included the URL to link with that immigrant's actual document, housed at FamilySearch.org. The bad news was that the accuracy of those links left something to be desired. Not to worry, a little hunt and peck effort quickly located each Blaising brother's own filed record among the Allen County naturalization documents. At least the link brought me to the correct record set.

While I was ecstatic to have so quickly found these particular naturalization records, only four of the brothers were identified in the process: John B. Blaising, who vouched for his sister Theresa's marriage to John Kelly Stevens; oldest brother Henry; and then the two brothers immediately older than Theresa, Louis and August. A fifth Blaising man, also named John, appeared in records, making me wonder whether, with a double given name beginning with "Jean" he might actually have been known in later life only as, say, Phillip or Lawrence. However, at this point, I'm presuming Phillip might have filed after moving to Ohio, and likewise Lawrence at his new home in Albany, New York. That will be a puzzle for another day.

With this information, I'll draw up a chart for easy reference, including each brother's stated date of arrival in New York. Whether that helps guide me to any of those passenger records, I can't say. Whether, upon finding them, they include any mention of the place in France each brother once called home is yet to be determined. But it's worth the look.