Affidavit of Witness - NJ Petition for Naturalization
- The instructions say, "For petitions for naturalization that have a date recorded only in the affidavit of witnesses section, type that date in the appropriate fields. Do not include any other information from affidavits of witnesses.". Each batch has a Petition for Naturalization and an Affidavit of Witnesses. Do I select "no" for "Should this image be indexed?" when the affidavit is highlighted? Because if I do, don't I have to fill out all of the information for it? I've selected to review a few (and then returned them) to how how others were doing it, and they've indexed both pages. This is confusing.
Answers
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The Affidavit of Witness is part of the Petition for Naturalization/Petition for Citizenship, not an independent document. Pre-1941 PETs had everything on one page, with the Oath of Allegiance on a separate page. The Oath of Allegiance is a document we do index. From 1941 onward, the AOW was on the back of the PETs, along with the Oath of Allegiance. When you are indexing Naturalization records, you will us the Affidavit date as the Record Date. That is the only information from the Affidavit that you will use. When you see the AOW first, you do index it, because you have the Oath on the same page, and the OOA is a document that we do index.
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To clarify a bit more (hopefully): one common format for these records is the Petition on the front of the page, continuing with the Affidavit on the top half of the back of the page, and then the Oath on the bottom half of the back of the page. Each indexing batch is two images, so it's either [P] and [A|O], or [A|O] from a previous person, and then a new [P]. Of these, we index P and O (separately), but A is treated as just a continuation of P, with the date being the only thing indexed from that part of the form.
So, in an indexing batch with records in this format, indexers are correct to mark both images as "yes, to be indexed": for the P on one image, and the O on the other image.
When the batch starts on the front of a page, then both the P and the O will be for the same person, and you will not need to use reference images to get the date for the P. When the batch starts on the back of a page, then the O will be for a different person than the P, and you will need to consult the reference images to see the next image, containing the date for the P.
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