MIWAYNE-L Archives

From:
Subject: Intent to declare citizenship records
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 02:33:10 EDT

First I want to thank everyone who has been so kind in giving me information
about vital records. This information has been a great help to me.

Now I am asking for information on intent to declare citizenship records.
Does anyone know where these are kept? Are there any closer than the federal
archives?
Say, the federal bldg. in downtown Detroit or the state archives?

Perhaps this is a good time to introduce myself and my slippery ancestors who
were living in Wayne Co. ;-)

I have been very fortunate in finding my father's Wieland ancestors way back
to the 1600s with much help from some exceptionally kind and talented people.
His ancestors came from Dutch Flanders, Zeeland, the Netherlands and settled
in Grand Rapids in 1871. Northwestern Michigan Genealogy Society has a very
active group and an awesome website due to dedicated volunteers. So does the
province of Zeeland in the Netherlands in a website called ISIS. I was so
lucky in that much of what I was looking for had already been researched out for
them as it had been for my husband's family once I got 4 generations out/back.
So that is history.

Now I am having another look at my mother's ancestors. They came from
Germany in 1876 (maternal) and somewhere between 1822 and 1852 (Paternal) and both
sets settled in Detroit, though they may have been in Hamtramck briefly at
first. I have the great priviledge and the curse of being the first to look for
these families because for the last 4 generations out no one else has been
looking for them that I know of--not on-line anyway. From Census records, land
records, obituaries and such, I thought I had enough information to trace them
back to Europe or at least find out what ship carried them over and when. I
was wrong. One big piece of necessary information is missing for all of them:
the town or city or village they came from in what is now called Germany.
This information is sometimes found in the intent to declare citizenship and it
is sometimes found in baptism records (if it is possible to find the church
where the US born were baptized and if that church still exists). I am thinking
that there is a chance that they were baptized in the church where they were
married [if they stayed in the same place and it seems like they did for a
while]. The marriage records will sometimes give the name of the church and the
presiding minister. Anyway, I am working backwards here because I failed to
complete my homework in getting everything that is known from the known place
and time.

Jean Wieland Bails

Researching Koehler, Fisher, Hopp and Knapp in Wayne County

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