Index to Declarations and Naturalizations Circuit Court 1906 – c1945 St. Clair County, Illinois

⇐The Courts home ♦ Overview and records available from the 4 courts which naturalized St. Clair County residents and.

©SCCGS 2010. The Society extends a hearty “Thank You” to Jim Moore who created this index and donated it to, and for use of, the St. Clair County Genealogical Society. Links to this page, and personal use granted. Commercial use, reformatting, and all types of republication, including electronic, are prohibited.

Indexes below are  to Volumes 1, 2, and part of 3 (1906–15 July 1918).

FamilySearch.org has Volumes 1– 18 indexed of the 19 volumes available (1906–1945); digital images are online at Affiliate Family History Libraries. Use the DGS number during that search as follows:

1. Click the magnifying glass on the right of the catalog screen.
2. Click More Options to reveal the advanced search box.
3. Click the Name button and type only the surname.
4. Under Record Options type the DGS number (not the film number).
5. Click search. If the record is not found, try a different DGS number from the catalog.

The Office of the Circuit Clerk, courthouse in Belleville, and IRAD in Carbondale have these records. Again, only Volumes 1, 2, and part of 3 are represented below.

Background

The Circuit Court was one of several courts with power to naturalize an individual. Other courts located within the boundaries of St. Clair County, and their indexes, are discussed on the Society’s primary naturalization page. Sample declarations, petitions, and certificates of arrival are also shown there.

About this Index and Surname Variations

A Declaration, Petition, and Certificate of Arrival may be among the documents filed with the Naturalization, sample illustrations may be found on the Society’s primary naturalization page. The index below shows

• Exact spelling of the surname on each document.
• Alternative spellings are shown within square brackets, e.g.,  [   name   ] showing spellings proposed by the transcriptionist when handwritten surnames were difficult to interpret.

Certificate Of Arrival – Careful Interpretation Warranted

These are discussed on the in the Overview.

Petitions Denied

If naturalization was denied, the reason will appear on the Petition. Some Petitions were rejected for what today might be viewed as trivial reasons, e.g., keeping a saloon or bar, usually in tandem with breach of laws restricting location, liquor sales, or hours of operation. Others were denied citizenship if they previously claimed an exemption from military service during World War I because they were not yet citizens of the United States. See, for example, “Men Who Claimed Exemption Do Not Get Papers,” Daily Advocate (Belleville, Ill.) 10 January 1921, p. 1.

Enemy Alien Registration – Careful Interpretation Warranted

When the U.S. was at war with another country, immigrants from that country then living in the U.S. — and who were not yet naturalized — were classified as “enemy aliens.” [In other words, the individual was an alien whose former country of allegiance was then an enemy.] The largest effort to register “enemy” aliens was conducted by the Department of Justice during World War I. In the 1920s, Congress subsequently granted authority to destroy the WWI “enemy alien” records. Consequently, a very small number survive today. Similar procedures applied during World War II. From The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy, 3rd ed., p. 410.

Circuit Court – Special Sessions Held in East St. Louis

* Apparently all the Volume 3 document sets were filed in St Clair County Circuit Court convened in East St Louis, not Belleville, presumably because of the sheer number of residents there and for their convenience. The Volume 3 record set begins with Petition no. 401 (dated 26 Jan 1915), and ends with no. 650 (dated 15 Jul 1918).

The Document Number: For Volumes 2 and 3, the document number is keyed to the stamped number found on Petitions, and is the same as shown below. The original index to Volume 1 shown on the microfilm was inconsistent, so a new index was created by the contributor and is keyed to the handwritten number on the Petition. If unable to locate the document by handwritten number, try matching the page number indexed below to a document’s stamped number. .