One of the best documents for information about your ancestor is an Alien Registration Affidavit. It only was completed by about 500,000 people starting in November 1917. It was to identify German people in the U.S. who were not naturalized and hence may have allegiance to Germany rather than the U.S. It was required of men who were not naturalized. German-born women were required to complete the document starting in April 1918. For men the form was a ”Registration Affidavit of Alien Enemy”, for women, it was a “Registration Affidavit of Alien Female.”
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I have put together a Quick Reference Guide that has a list of all the information that is in one of these affidavits. You can obtain the two-page Quicksheet pdf for easy reference by clicking on the Download button:
For all the previously published Quick Reference Guides, click on QuickSheets
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One reply on “Did Your Ancestor Complete an Alien Registration Affidavit?”
ACPL’s Genealogy Center has a free database (an online version of a book): Genealogical Records of German Families of Allen County, Indiana, 1918 which can be searched at https://www.genealogycenter.info/search_germanfamilies.php
(Info courtesty Judy G. Russell’s article The forms of 1918: Hoosier-style https://www.legalgenealogist.com/2015/05/21/the-forms-of-1918-hoosier-style/ )
German people from all over the country can be seen in this database, depending on where the Allen County families had relatives. Unfortunately, the database is not set up to search by the location of the out-of-town relatives.