ABRAHAM ROSENTHAL - DECLARATION OF INTENTION (1915); PETITION FOR NATURALIZATION AND CERTIFICATE OF NATURALIZATION (1922)

DOCUMENTS:
1. rosenthal-abraham-declaration-of-intention-1915-11-04.pdf
2. rosenthal-abraham-petition-for-naturalization-1922.pdf
3. rosenthal-abraham-certificate-of-naturalization-1922-08-03.pdf

NOTES:

• These are the naturalization documents for Abraham Rosenthal [Harold's paternal grandfather]:
  1. his declaration of intention (November 4, 1915)
  2. his petition for naturalization (1922 -- the precise date is hard to read)
  3. his certificate of naturalization (August 3, 1922)
• Received by mail from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Genealogy Program, November 2016.
• The declaration of intention gives us Abraham's date of birth! September 1, 1867. But this is probably an estimate. In those days many immigrants did not know their date of birth. Often people estimated dates as being the first of the month, the fifteenth, or the last day of the month.
• In the declaration of intention, he gave his place of birth, and his last foreign residence as Lomza. This is different from Przasnysz, the place listed by Albert Rosenthal and Harry Rosenthal as their place of birth and by Sarah Rosenthal as her and her children's last place of residence. According to Google Maps, the two towns are about 90 kilometres apart. Lomza was also the birthplace of Henry Brock (Abraham's son-in-law, who married Leah Rosenthal in 1914) according to Henry's declaration of intention.
• Here's a link to some information about Lomza, Poland and its Jewish community.
• In the declaration of intention, Abraham gives the date of his arrival as Dec. 5, 1903 (on the Patricia from Hamburg), but in the petition he gives it as Dec. 5, 1902 (we know that the family arrived on December 15, 1902).
• In the petition for naturalization and the certificate, he gives his address as 17 Ludlow St. (See this address today in Google Maps.) The family was also at this address in the 1920 census).
• In the petition, Abraham gives all his children's birth dates as the 15th of the month, which presumably means he didn't know their precise birthdays and these are estimates.
• The witnesses for the petition are Betty(?) Pincus, a housewife and Morris A. Friedman, a merchant (perhaps friends of Abraham's?).