US, New England—Petitions for Naturalization, 1787–1906 [Part P] [MQ53-WFQ] Witness Statements
Are Witness statements include the name of the applicant for naturalization. Are these statements indexed? The only statement that I can find for these is as follows:
- The affidavit of witnesses was often recorded on the same page as the oath of allegiance. When this is the case, do not mark the image as "No, No Extractable Data." The oath of allegiance should be indexed.
I take the above statement to mean if there is no oath of allegiance, the witness statements are not indexed (no extractable data). Is this correct? The indexers seem to be 50/50 on this.
Thank you!
Answers
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Witness Statements/Afiidavit of Witnesses are only indexed if they are stand-alone documents.
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The witness statements are stand-alone documents. Some have more than one petitioner's name on them. For example, I saw one that had 11 names on it of petitioners one person was speaking for. The person had marked as no extractable data, but I changed it to index all the petitioner's names.
The state of Vermont had official forms made up for the witness statements and they can have multiple petitioners named. I will continue to index when reviewing these stand-alone documents, if the indexer marked them as no extractable data.
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Thank you very much for asking this. I was putting the names of the witnesses in and then realized that I might be misinterpreting who the principal is. Fixing now!
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I'm not convinced. I will not index these unless it is stated in the instructions, which they are not. I don't see anywhere these should be indexed only as stand-alone documents.
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US, New England—Petitions for Naturalization, 1787–1906 [Part P]
[MQ53-88X]
every batch is prefaced with these special instructions to index all documents pertaining to the naturalization process. There is not an example how to index the stand alone witness documents but they are not listed as documents not to index so that could mean they are to be indexed.
Would be nice to have an example how to index or specific instruction not to index stand alone witness documents as they do include petitioner names and some indexers are taking time to index them in this project.
Special Instructions
In this naturalization project all documents pertaining to the naturalization process should be indexed. Please review the project instructions for how to index these records.
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Sorry. If there is no specific instruction, I will not index these. I would like to have other opinions from the main indexing authorities. Of course, I use Witness statements for reference. Batch [MQ53-N77]. The person indexed this and there was NO petitioner's name anywhere.
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I will index these now. Only if there is no petitioner's name I will N E Data the image.
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@Ashlee C., can we please get a ruling on this?
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The project instructions infer to (N E D) Witness Statements. What to look for while Reviewing [#3]
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US, New England—Petitions for Naturalization, 1787–1906 [Part M]
[MQ5D-H5Y]
Part P that started this thread might be finished. There are some variations in the instructions for Part M and especially the initial what to look for info. This part M set of images has a stand alone witness page (image 3) with the petitioner's name on it.
Any official word on this yet? I can't see where it says to index stand alone witness images but it also doesn't say not to index them as they are not in the list of what not to index. The what to index list is not conclusive as it says:
In addition, index documents that are similar to these form-types.
The stand alone witness form could a similar form-type worth indexing if it has a petitioner's name on it.
Witness forms with no petitioner's name seem clear to be no extractable data
It is also clear if a witness section is not stand alone but part of another document then only the date is used if needed.
What do you think I should do with this batch?
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I did see a Witness Statement [NED] as an example. That's good enough to me. I will be used for reference only (Dates and Names).
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