Male or Female on Utah Naturalizations
Regarding US, Utah, Utah County—Naturalization Records, 1859–1903[M3J6-HYJ]
Can I assume that the person is Male since the form has the pre-written "his"
on it and it has not been marked out and changed to "her" or anything?
Answers
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I don't see any reference to a field to index sex in the instructions I can view for that project.
In general, US naturalizations, before women had the right to vote, by virtue of the 19th Amendment, are males only. Many courts would not even naturalize a woman if she tried to apply. Women received derivative citizenship from the naturalization of men - father or husband.
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I was able to view the series from the "review" option.
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The project examples do not use the pre-printed "he" to determine a gender in How to Index a Certificate of Admission, nor do they in the Naturalization document even where it is handwritten "himself, (Viz) he was born".
On previous naturalization projects, unless the primary had a wife or a husband, or they had crossed out one of the genders available, we were not supposed to index a gender. Although I don't agree with this project example on the case of the Naturalization document, I do think that because "he" was a gender neutral pronoun well into the 20th century it should not be used to determine gender on a preprinted form.
Single women and widows could be naturalized prior to the passage of the 19th amendment and they were. Most women did not see the need to be naturalized until they were guaranteed the right to vote with the amendment.
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In the context of - US, Utah, Utah County—Naturalization Records, 1859–1903[M3J6-HYJ] - I would not find 'he' to be a 'gender neutral' pronoun (dissenting opinion). But without any collection expertise I couldn't tell you how often a clerk of court would crossout/notate Sex.
I was able to download a batch for this Project. Reviewing Field Help: Sex:
"Select Male or Female from the drop-down list. Index the sex only if it was specifically recorded or you can tell what it was from relationship terms, such as "son" or "daughter," titles or terms, or other evidence in the language. Do not assume the sex of a person based on given names. If the sex was not recorded or was written as a variation of the word "unknown," press Ctrl+B to mark this field blank."
So unless Sex is implicitly recorded (not the he/his in the preprinted form) - you MUST mark the Sex field <BLANK>. The researcher will have to decide for themselves. @Melissa S Himes - right again 👍️
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There is a Sex field to index in the project. I just remember on these typed forms we were told in the past not to index gender based on the pre-printed use of "he" in the legal documents. I suspect that is why the project instruction examples don't have a gender indexed. Style manuals continue to use he as a gender neutral pronoun, although some are adopting "they or their".
Here is a batch to have a look at: M3JD-22M
https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/batch/978fd924-9b37-4114-b1c6-678d8908cc3c
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Thank you for your help.
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