Naturalization Papers
Federal Court
Western District of Tennessee
at Memphis


Transcribed and formatted
by Lynn Franklin

 

This is a partial index to the records of Naturalization from the Federal Court, Western District of Tennessee, located in Memphis.  To enter the files on our site, click here: Naturalization Records.

 

These records are in two parts, first a Declaration of Intention, generally followed some years later by a Petition for Naturalization.   After the two filings, a judge would grant citizenship, or not.  Frequently there is a form showing these results.  At some points in time, the naturalization process could include the wife and children, if any.  There are instances of people filing only one of the two parts in this court. 

 

The information that might be available in these records includes some of, but not all in every instance, of the following:  Name(s) including some name variations and changes, addresses at the time of application, age, birth date and place, occupation, date of immigration, manner of immigration (vessel usually), country of prior citizenship, wife’s name, birth date, and place, children’s name, birth date and place, name, occupation, address and signature of witnesses for the Petitioner, photo of the petitioner in some later applications, height, weight, color, complexion, color of hair, color of eyes, other visible distinctive marks,  signature and date of application.

 

The first Declaration of Intention listed was dated 3 December 1906. The first Petition was dated 4 January 1907. There is also a separate ledger of naturalizations for US soldiers dated from 15 June 1918 to 8 March 1919.

 

This index is designed to help you locate the record for a particular person.   The columns are last name, first name, volume number, record number, page number and (if containing) a photo.  Any cell with a period simply means that no information was listed in the index.  For optimum results, be sure to check all possible spellings, variations and versions, of any name.

 

These records are held at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Southeast Regional Branch, outside of Atlanta, in Morrow, Georgia. Some of the actual records have been scanned, and are being entered into the database. For any entry in the database that is blue and underlined, click on this entry to bring up the scan of a document. If the particular document you are interested in hasn't been entered into the database yet, you can either write to NARA to request them, or go in person and view and copy the records.

 

The address to write to is:  NARA, 5780 Jonesboro Road, Morrow, Georgia 30260.  Their phone number is 770-968-2100.  They do charge a nominal fee for their time for copying and mailing these documents (currently $10).  If you are planning to go in person to the archives, you can call or e-mail to request to have the documents you want to view retrieved and waiting.  There is a small per page fee for using the copier at the Archives (currently twenty cents a page).  Viewing the records is free.

 

This is an ongoing project. This database is currently being updated, and scans added. I will continue working on it as I'm able to travel to Atlanta. preliminary draft of this index.  I will be double checking it, and filling in the gaps as I’m able to travel to Atlanta.

 

I hope that you find the people that you’re searching for!  If you do, please feel free to email me, as I have copies of some of these documents, perhaps 20%.  I wish that I had copies of all of them, but I don’t yet. 

Once again, to enter the files on our site, click here: Naturalization Records.

 

Contact: Lynn Franklin at [email protected].

Copyright © 2007 Lynn Ann Franklin. All Rights Reserved. Prior written permission is required from Lynn Ann Franklin before this material can be printed or otherwise copied, displayed or distributed in any form. This is a FREE genealogy site sponsored through RootsWeb and can be reached directly at Selected Southern Jewish Databases (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~ssjdb/index.html).