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| Good by 12th NY, Library of Congress via Flickr the Commons |
1920 marks the 19th amendment and women, but not all women, can vote. Who couldn't? I posted about Puerto Rican women yesterday and for the next two days I want to talk about an even larger population of women who couldn't vote in 1920.
The American women who lost their citizenship because of who they married.*
First, let me set the scene.
Now, if she was a non-citizen but her husband was a US citizen she automatically became a US citizen.
Now what does this mean for the American women who married a non-citizen? Well in 1920 when women gain the right to vote, these American women did not. Because the US didn't acknowledge these women as citizens even though they were born here. (And quite frankly, they were also not necessarily seen as citizens for their husband's country of origin either).
In a Report by the Secretary of State on the topic of citizenship it states: “That an American woman who married a foreigner shall take, during coverture, the nationality of her husband…” It goes on to detail that a foreign born woman who married an American man would become a citizen of the United States through that marriage and that citizenship status would not change upon the termination of that marriage. [1]
How many women did this law affect? It’s hard to come up with a precise number but according to author Ann Marie Nicolosi in her article, "We Do Not Want Our Girls to Marry Foreigners: Gender, Race, and American Citizenship, a look at the 1920 U.S. Census" suggests that around 89 per thousand children were born to American mothers and foreign born men. In the 1910 census, nearly 6 million children had one native born parent and one foreign born parent.
Although, the Married Women’s Independent Citizenship Act of 1922 (commonly referred to as the Cable Act) ended derivative citizenship for American born women, it was not until 1936 that these women could reapply for their citizenship. The Cable Act only applied to American women who married men who had been eligible for citizenship. For American women married to men who were racially ineligible for American citizenship, for example Asian men, the law still did not allow them to regain their citizenship.
To learn more about naturalization laws that affected women, see:
- The Qualities of a Citizen: Women, Immigration and Citizenship, 1870-1965 by Martha Gardner
- A Nationality of her Own: Women, Marriage and the Law of Citizenship by Candice Lewis Bredbenner
- Christina K. Schaefer's, The Hidden Half of the Family: A Sourcebook for Women’s Genealogy
- Loretto Dennis Szucs’ They Became Americans: Finding Naturalization Records and Ethnic Origins
- Christine K. Schaefer’s Guide to Naturalization Records of the United States
- Meg Hacker's article, When Saying "I Do" Meant Giving Up Your US Citizenship
This law and its affects on women illustrate two important lessons for genealogists. First, when researching your ancestor, do not downplay the role history had on their lives. This is especially important in considering the lives of women. Laws regarding property, inheritance and citizenship all played factors in woman’s lives and what documentation may be available. Second, although a situation like this one described may not pertain to your genealogy you may want to consider how immigration, naturalization or citizenship affected the ancestors in your family tree. When we make assumptions about our ancestor’s lives based on our knowledge of the way the world works, we miss out on rich sources that can lead us to knowing more about our ancestors.
* Canadian women also lost their citizenship when they married non-citizens.
[1]Citizenship of the United States, Expatriation, and Protection Abroad, 1906.
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