Declaration of Intention
Naturalization was a two-step process that generally took a minimum of 5 years. In general, after living in the United States for 2 years, an alien could file a Declaration of Intention(also called First Papers) to become a citizen.
Information found on this Declaration of Intention includes: Name, age, occupation, physical description, place and date of birth, current residence, how he immigrated from Canada to USA, his ports of arrival and departure, date of immigration, marital status, name of wife, original signature
Petition for Naturalization
After 2 additional years, the alien could Petition for Naturalization. After the petition was granted, a Certificate of Citizenship was issued to the alien. See Changes in Requirements for specific time periods from 1790 to present.
To locate naturalization records, start your research at the National Archives (NARA)
If you want to know if first papers were ever filed, check the 1900 USA Federal census. Under the question of whether or not an individual was naturalized, you should see one of these three abbreviations regarding his status:
Search billions of historical records and family trees on Ancestry, including immigration records, passenger lists, naturalization records, census records, and other documents that can help trace your ancestors' journey.
Start your Ancestry free trialAL was used to signify that the individual was still an alien and was not naturalized nor had not begun the naturalization process.
PA was used to signify that the individual had gone through the Declaration of Intent and had filed his “first” papers.
NA was used to signify that the individual had completed the naturalization process and was a naturalized citizen.
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