General
The Monroe County Naturalization Records prior to September 27, 1906 are incomplete because most of those naturalization transactions were recorded only in the Court Minute Book and not in separate volumes.
For preservation purposes some post-1906 Declarations and Petitions have been dismantled and placed in boxes. For these volumes thecontents list below gives the volume number in parentheses for identification purposes and the box and folder number for location purposes.
Most of these records have been microfilmed. Reels 1-2 and 11-14 were microfilmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah, which holds the master negatives. Reels 3-10 were microfilmed by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, which holds the negatives.
Records and Indexes
The Index to Declarations of Intention, 1854-1906, is arranged in alphabetical segments by first letter of surname and therein chronologically by date of filing the Declaration. The name and the date of filing are the only pieces of information given in this index. The original Index to Declarations can be found in Folder 1 of Box 8 of the collection. The information in this index was rewritten into another volume referred to as Index to Declarations (New). With this information the researcher can locate individual Declarations in Boxes 2-4.
Pre-1906 Declarations are arranged chronologically by year and thereunder are alphabetical. The Declaration forms completed in Monroe County do not actually begin until 1854. However, Boxes 2-4 also contain copies of earlier Declarations from other courts. There is no index to these particular Declarations.
The alphabetical Card Index to Citizenship, 1868-1906, indexes the Certificates of Naturalization, 1883-1902 (Volume A), and the Petitions 1903-1906 (Volume B), as well as Petitions and Certificates not included in this collection. It gives the volume and page number of the Court Minute Book where the naturalizations are recorded. This index also lists the date of naturalization and the names of witnesses, county of birth or allegiance, and date and port of arrival in the United States.
The most complete index is the Index to Naturalizations, 1868-1946, listing those who completed the naturalization process. It is arranged in alphabetical segments by first letter of surname and therein chronologically by date of the Order of Admission to citizenship. Dates, volume, page, and document numbers for Declarations, Petitions, and Certificates are given.
The post-September 26, 1906 documents are complete and follow standard recording systems with one exception. That exception is the manner in which military petitions from soldiers at Fort McCoy were handled; they were treated separately and employ a separate numbering system.
