US, Illinois—Naturalization Records, 1912–1933, Oath of Alleg & Pet for Nat are diff people
I keep getting batches where the Oath of Allegiance is for a different person than the Petition for Naturalization on the next image. I did one where I just entered the correct names, but not sure if that is a problem.
Answers
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Different people could mean a couple of things:
The Petitioner asked for their name to be changed. PETS from 1900(ish) to about 1930 will be indexed on the Oath under Order of Court Admitting Petitioner. Post 1940(ish) PETs will have that information on the front side of the document and the new name will be part of the Oath.
You are indexing a Witness. Information about Witnesses are not indexed.
You have two entries, the Oath for the immediate predecessor of the PET, and the PET for person #2. Oaths and PETs are indexed separately, even if they are for different people, because the Oath is step 2 of the second step and the Oath is the last part of the Immigration process.
You may have pages that are stuck together. Sometimes, records that are 100+ years old will do that. Heck, I've accidentally put two stamps together and they don't come apart. I did that last Thursday. It's a wonderful idea if you have three stamps left. 😐️ I ordered more the same day.
To make sure what's going on, please share your batch code. The batch code is located at the top of your indexing screen and looks like [MQ2J-6G2]. The batch code can also be found under Batch/About Batch or Help/Share Batch.2 -
In the Famous Relative's naturalization in 1955, the Oath of Allegiance is the final section of the paperwork. Whatever comes after it on the film is naturally for someone else.
Ditto for his ex-wife, in 1948. Image 215 ends with Cornelia's Oath; image 216 is someone else's certificate of arrival.
Indexing batches are just consecutive images, without regard to their content, so you shouldn't be forcing them to be for the same person. They very often aren't.
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Thank you for your help! Thew batch code is MQ2J-NCK
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Thank you for sharing batch code. Both images are almost the same, but in the first image there is a document at the bottom of the second page - Certificate of arrival which is not being indexed in this project. In this image you only need to index first page - Oath of Allegiance. Pages with the overlay on them are not to be indexed so please ignore second page.
In the second image overlay has been moved to the Oath of Allegiance. You do not index it as there is overlay on the top of it (and it has already been indexed in the first image). You only need to index Petition for Naturalisation on second page.
Basically, all information on the page covered by another document, even if most details are visible, needs to be ignored.
Here's the info about the overlays from the project instructions:
Overlays
Occasionally you will come across an image that is partially covered by another document on top of it, referred to as an overlay. When this occurs, do the following:
- If the overlay contains information about a record type being indexed in the project, create a separate record, and index the information in the corresponding fields. If it does not pertain to the record type being indexed in the project, then do not index any information from it.
- Do not try to index any information underneath the overlay that may be visible.
If you have any more questions, please do not hesitate to reach out. 🙂 Happy to help if I can.
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Thank you for the response. I guess I was mistaken that the people in a batch would be the same. A batch literally means unrelated documents batched together. Is that right?
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Yes and no.
If you have an Oath for Joe Smith on Image 1 and a Declaration of Jim Doe on Image 2, then they are unrelated.
If you have a Declaration (Image 1) and Petition (Image 2) for Joe Smith, then they are related. The naturalization was (is?) a three-part process. The immigrant first declared his/her intent to become a citizen. That is Step 1. A few years later, the immigrant filed a petition to become a citizen. That is Step 2. The last part was the Oath, when the immigrant (usually) became a citizen. That is Step 3, the final step. The entire process took an average of 5-7 years (except for immigrants that fought in WWI, but that's for another day).
The way batches have been, well, forever (or at least since I've been doing Nats), they are usually a 2-Image batch. Sometimes you have the Oath of Joe Smith and the Declaration for Jim Doe, and sometimes you don't. It just the way that the documents were scanned.
Older (1900-ish to 1930-ish) documents can be a 3 or 4-image batch, but that's when you have the Oath for Joe Smith and the Declaration and Petition for Jim Doe.
There are 10,000 (ok, exaggerating) variables when indexing Nats. You can get a 2-image batch that is the Declaration and Petition for the same person, or you can get Oaths, Declarations and Petitions for two different people.1 -
The images in a batch are not necessarily unrelated, since they're consecutive. They're just not necessarily related, either.
One person's full naturalization file can contain a variable number of pages. When the files were filmed or digitized, each person's papers were kept together and captured consecutively: Person A page 1 of 3, Person A page 2 of 3, Person A page 3 of 3, Person B page 1 of 2, Person B page 2 of 2, Person C page 1 of 4, Person C page 2 of 4, Person C page 3 of 4, Person C page 4 of 4, and so forth and so on. (In actuality the files are not quite that variable, but I'm going with this for illustrative purposes.)
Indexing batches consist of some number of images set by the project. The naturalizations use two. This means that from the hypothetical film described above, one batch would have Person A's first two pages, one would have Person A's last page and Person B's first page, a third batch would have Person B's second page and Person C's first, the next would have Person C's second and third pages, etc.
Just to complicate matters further, the naturalization images sometimes contain multiple pages, side by side. This happens for example when the forms are double-sided and each person's file is attached along one edge. And for extra-extra funtimes, different parts of the same piece of paper may or may not count as separate entries.
So, in summary: the images in a naturalizations batch may or may not be for the same person, and each image may have zero, one, or two indexable entries on it. (I think the entries on a single image are always for the same person, as in, I think the filming/digitizing always moved on to a new image when it moved on to a new person's file.)
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I think the best thing to do is Go Step by Step and refer to the PI and examples often. Do your best and enjoy the experience 😊 that's really all any of us can do. Best wishes 😎
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ouch… I must have deleted that part. Apologies, it was late when I was typing and I kept changing things. After 2 excellent replies from Erutherford and Julia there is nothing left to cover. However, I would like to share my view on this as well.
Batches remind me of scans of books with very short chapters. Sometimes you get parts 1 and 2 of the same chapter, sometimes you get end of 1st chapter and beginning of 2nd chapter (some batches consists of 2 images of single page records for one person, some have 2 images of 2 pages each).
This is a huge project and we only get a random small part to index. You can see the pages scanned before and after your batch by clicking on the "Reference Images". You can find it in the top left corner of the scanned image in the vertical menu, there are: "+" "-" "Tools" and "Reference Images" (if you hover over the icons with the cursor it will show you titles). These additional pages are only for the reference and do not need to be indexed or information from them used in your batch unless you come across an image which has a record date on the page outside of the batch you have been allocated. Index only the part that is needed for document you are indexing. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility!
I hope I did not confuse you too much. If you will come across anything you are unsure about when indexing, please ask 🙂
Here's the guideline for what to do when records span over 2 images.
https://prod.familysearch.psdops.com/cmsa/idx/what-to-do-when-records-span-2-images-or-to-view-additional-images
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