Born in Brooklyn: An Alien in WWII

Researching women can be challenging. Research married women can be more challenging. Researching women who marry an alien can become more complex. Researching this topic was intriguing and challenging. Then, finding a way to explain its complexities clearly and understandably made this blog post take considerably longer to write than I had anticipated. I learned a lot, and hope you will too! Additional resources to learn more are listed at the bottom of the post.

I always try out databases, and there was only one person I could think of in my family tree who might not have been a citizen in the 1940’s. She married a subject of Great Britain. After her Scottish husband’s death, she had remarried a U.S. citizen, so I did not think I would find her in the database of people who registered under the Alien Registration Act of 1940. (Other countries had similar laws: stay tuned for another blog post about that.)

Surprisingly, her name appeared.

On 6 Aug 1913 my great aunt married James Howie Young, a man who lived in Scotland in her parent’s home. They sailed off to travel through Europe, then live permanently in Glasgow, Scotland. James died in 1929. Later, she married a citizen, John J. Greene in 1932.

The Expatriation Act was passed on March 2, 1907, and at that time “any American woman who marries a foreigner shall take the nationality of her husband.” On 22 September 1922, the Cable Act repealed the 1907 Expatriation Act and women no longer lost their citizenship based on their husband’s nationality when they married. But for women married before then, the situation was more complicated. In 1936, divorced or widowed women could repatriate via an application, and upon its approval taking an oath of allegiance. As of 2 July 1940, an Act allowed women to repatriate no matter what their marital status was. The repatriation oaths could be filed in any county, state or federal. They might be separate in a court’s naturalization records (as in Westchester County, NY). What we do know from the AR-2 is that even though a statutory path to repatriation existed by 1936, Kathryn apparently had not completed it by the date of her 1940 alien registration (20 December 1940).

My first reminder that she had been affected by the Expatriation Act was when her citizenship was listed on a ship manifest for a cruise from Bermuda in 1931. She was shown as a citizen of Britain. (Race or people: German; Returning Resident; Place of birth: Brooklyn.) The record was definitely for her, as she lived at the same address on Stuyvesant Avenue in Brooklyn as the person she was going to join, her mother. (This was also a known family address.) The German race or people was interesting; her late father was a German immigrant to the U.S. who naturalized.

Further searching uncovered that she had returned to the U.S. in 1929 on SS Laconia. Her nationality (country): Britain; Race or people: American. She was a widow, with her nearest relative in the country she departed being her mother-in-law, and she was going to join her mother in Brooklyn. She had been in the United States from 1928 to 1929.

After watching Researching Immigrant Ancestors: Alien Registration (AR-2) Forms Elizabeth Burnes and John LeGloahec in the 2025 NARA Genealogy Series https://www.archives.gov/calendar/genealogy-series/2025#Session%205, I searched for an AR-2 for Kathryn. (Use the link to view the video of the presentation, and to download the presentation slides.)

The parts of the Alien Registration Form are shown below. NARA has the AR-2 itself, but additional parts of the form may be found in A-Files or may no longer exist.

I searched from Access to Archival Databases (AAD) at https://aad.archives.gov/aad/and selected the Flexoline Index Database, which is the finding aid to the AR-2 forms.

Alternatively, you can go directly to the search page at https://aad.archives.gov/aad/series-description.jsp?s=5259&cat=all&bc=sl

If you are having issues finding a person, remember to try advanced searches with broader information like surname and location, and alternate spellings. There were no results for either of her two married names, but there was a result for her maiden name. The use of wildcards is also an option (e.g. Kath* Small).

There was only one result.

I viewed the record.

I clicked on the icon in the View Record column to see the result. (Only the top of the full result is shown below.)

From the information in this search result compared to what I knew of Kathryn’s life, I was sure that this was a record for her. Alien Registration: A4790720

Using the instructions in the presentation, I used the A-number to search the NARA Catalog to see if NARA had an Alien File (A-File) for her. That search was unsuccessful.

I began the process to order her AR-2 file from NARA by sending the email that is described in the instructions at https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/alien-registration-ar-2. This page also contains a link to sample forms. Since she was born over 100 years ago, the process was simpler than for deceased individuals who were born more recently than 100 years ago.

There was an automated email response reminding me to be sure that I had submitted the required information. I had sent the email on a weekend day, and on the next business day, a NARA Archivist responded that their search in the Flexoline Index had returned a record for Kathryn, and provided both of her married names. (Her married names were not included in the search result from the AAD.) The email also confirmed the results of my search, that NARA did not hold an A-file for her. If you find that NARA has the A-File for your ancestor, follow the instructions in the NARA video for information about how to order it.

The email contained information about how to complete the payment for the order. There is no option to pay online, so follow the instructions. Not wanting to email my credit card information, I elected to wait a couple of days to be sure the order number existed in their system, then called to my provide payment. Within a couple of weeks, a link to download the form was emailed to me. The link is advertised to only stay active for 30 days, so be sure to download it.

Kathryn’s Alien Registration Form gave her physical description, showed her profession as a housewife, and included that she had not been arrested. The date of the affidavit was 20 December 1940. People who were unsure that they were an aalien were encouraged to register, and in the Federal Register, August 14, 1940, §29.4(n), the official was instructed to write “Applicant doubts need for registration” in the margin of the form. According to the Statement by the Department of Justice paragraph in Congressional Record of the Senate, 1941, thousands of people doubted their status and registered for their own protection. Kathryn has no such notation.

Upon not finding an A-File at NARA, the suggestion is that I could possibly pursue if USCIS might still hold an A-File for her, and had not yet transferred it to NARA. What I learned from the Westchester County, NY, courthouse was that these women could have filed an Application to take Oath of Allegiance as a Naturalization Repatriation. (The database had no entry for her in that County of her residence.) USCIS may not hold an A-File for her, and searching for one incurs a cost, so I may not do this check. It is also possible that she never did repatriate.

Upon prompting, ChatGPT put together an infographic about the AR-2 to A-file process using information at: https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/alien-registration-ar-2. Google Gemini verified the information in this image using information found at the NARA AR-2 webpage.

The laws concerning a women’s citizenship in these days was not straightforward, so I did a little more digging. Stay tuned for another blog post with more information about other countries’ similar laws and how Kathryn may have been stateless after her second marriage.

Learning More

Alien Registration (AR-2) Forms https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/alien-registration-ar-2

To learn more about Flexoline files, go to https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/flexoline

Researching Immigrant Ancestors: Alien Registration (AR-2) Forms Elizabeth Burnes and John LeGloahec in the 2025 NARA Genealogy Series https://www.archives.gov/calendar/genealogy-series/2025#Session%205

When Saying “I Do” Meant Giving Up Your U.S. Citizenship by Meg Hacker https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2014/spring/citizenship.pdf

Westchester County County Clerk: Index for N – O https://archives.westchestercountyny.gov/county-clerk/n-o#series11

Federal Register, August 14, 1940, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1940-08-14/pdf/FR-1940-08-14.pdf (see §29.4(n) on p 2840)

The National Registration of Aliens: Instructions for Registration and Specimen Form https://digital.sciencehistory.org/works/rnpj9e5

U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, 77th Cong., 1st sess., April 1, 1941, vol. 87. https://www.congress.gov/77/crecb/1941/04/01/GPO-CRECB-1941-pt3-9-1.pdf (see Statement by the Department of Justice paragraph 3 p 2773 )

Give it a try, and let me know who you find!