Pauline Raczkiewicz Loses Her Citizenship

Pauline Raczkiewicz (my grandma) traveled from Pennsylvania to Michigan and ended up losing her U.S. citizenship. Pauline was born a United States citizen to parents who had immigrated from Poland. She never traveled outside of the United States and in fact the farthest trip she made was from Michigan to Pennsylvania. She traveled when she was a young woman from Oil City to Grand Rapids with a friend to visit relatives and never returned home. On that trip she met and married Anthony Raczkiewicz. The short version of that story is that her mother was difficult to get along with and expected her to take care of the family’s many children. The family had 12 children, five of which didn’t live past childhood and her mother was still having children when Pauline was already married and had one child herself. Knowing more about this trip to Grand Rapids and how Pauline and Anthony met would also make for a good story. While their home was of modest value, Anthony and Pauline Raczkiewicz took pride in their contributions to their church and in helping family and friends. She was known for helping others in the Polish community to get needed benefits, arrange emigration from Poland and solve problems of daily living for people of little means and a language barrier. She lent money, wrote letters, read documents for people and even went to court with them. At least once though, she needed to go to court for her own interests. Pauline’s trip to court for herself was to regain her US citizenship that she lost without ever leaving the United States. ***** So how could a woman born in the United States and who never left the United States lose her citizenship? The answer lies in a little-known law. American women who married between 1907 and 1922 lost their American citizenship if they married an “alien” even without leaving the United States. This was because of the Act of March 2, 1907. Women became the citizens of the country of their husbands – obviously, this was during a time when women did not have a lot of rights. Since Anthony was an “alien” when he and Pauline married in 1920, she lost her citizenship due to the then-current law which didn’t change for many years. Anthony began the process of applying for citizenship on October 7, 1921, and was at the stage of “First Papers.” (There is no evidence that he ever completed the process. When I requested his naturalization paperwork from the National Archives, the only item I received was his registration as an “alien” in September, 1940.) ***** Pauline was born a United States citizen. She was born on April 23, 1902, in Oil City, Pennsylvania, to Anna Agnes Barsch, age 21, and Walter Eugene Skrobat, age 30. Pauline’s parents were both Polish immigrants to the U.S. who ended up in Oil City. Her father was Wladyslaw (Walter Eugene) Skrobat (born June 27, 1873 in Gorlice, Moszczenica, Poland) and her mother was Anna Agnes Barszcz (born February 12, 1883 in Ropica Gorna, Moszczenica, Poland). Walter and Anna married in Oil City, Pennsylvania, on June 24, 1901, ten months before Pauline was born. “Appallonia” (spelling on the birth document) was baptized at the Church of Saint Joseph, 35 Pearl Avenue, Oil City, Pennsylvania, the day after she was born, on April 24, 1902. Her Godparents were John Barszcz (likely her uncle) and Anna Szczepanik. ***** After Pauline married in 1920, she lost her citizenship. Many women were unaware of this situation and there is no way to know how or when she figured it out. They did receive an English and Polish newspaper regularly and participated in activities at the social halls for Polish Americans. ***** Several revisions to this law were made, attempting to give American women who married foreigners back their rights. The Cable Act of September 22, 1922, was repealed so anyone married after that point would not lose their American citizenship by giving women equal citizenship and nationality rights. Unfortunately, this didn’t solve the issue for women previously married like Pauline. Another revision in 1931 corrected more problems but still did not apply to Pauline. The Act of June 25, 1936, allowed widowed or divorced women to repatriate -- all others still had to go through the entire naturalization process if they wanted to regain their citizenship. Again, this version did not help Pauline since she was married to her husband and he was still alive. ***** It wasn’t until the revision in 1940 that all women who had lost citizenship by marriage could repatriate regardless of their marital status. The Act of July 2, 1940, changed things again so that all women who had lost citizenship by marriage could repatriate regardless of their marital status. An Oath of Allegiance was all that was required with no need for a declaration of intention. On March 30, 1943, Pauline took the “Oath of Allegiance to the United States” in the Western District of Michigan Court of the US in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At the time Pauline was a 40 year old housewife who had not been a citizen for the previous 23 years. (As those of you who knew my Grandma’s tendency to change her age, I had to calculate her age several times before I could make this statement of her age!) When she took the Oath of Allegiance, Pauline had a medium complexion, blue eyes and brown hair. She was 5”3” tall and weighed 190 pounds, with a small scar on the right side of her chin. ***** This solved the mystery of why among the small number of family records I found, there was an Oath of Allegiance to the United States signed by my U.S. born grandmother. It didn’t make sense to me why she needed to take an oath when I found it. This was one of the early stories that really hooked me into learning more about my family history. *****