Alien Enemy Registration Affidavits

Tami, you’ve given us a great example with several issues to discuss. Let’s think through them one by one.

1.

Whenever we say something came from the “Department of …,” we have to identify the company or government that the department is part of.  Example: U. S. Department of Justice. The only government you have identified is Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana—although that is actually two separate governments and neither is linked to the statement about "Department of ..."

Who created this record? Is it a federal record, a state record, a county-based record, or a city-based record? You begin by saying that your ancestor filled this out with the Fort Wayne Police Department in 1918. Normally, then, this would be considered a record created by the Fort Wayne Police Department. So how does the “[Whatever Government,] Department of Justice” enter into the picture?

2.

You are using a format for documents held in an archive; but you do not seem to have all the details needed for that format.  What collection does this “registration affidavit” appear in? What record group does that collection belong to? You refer to “loose documents in alphabetical order,” but you don’t name the collection or record group that those loose documents compose. You only name one document.  Does The History Center actually have the original documents, or do they have a microfilm version of those originals?

3.

In the middle of your citation, the second line says

… “Herman R. Radtke, born 7 April 1863, copy of original documents, loose documents in alphabetical order, unpaginated; The History Center ….

Two issues here affect clarity.

Punctuation:

Items in a series are separated by commas. But when we use commas to separate items in a series, those items should all be related; they should all be the same type, at the same level. 

In this case “Herman R. Radtke, born 7 April 1863, copy of original documents …” does not meet that criteria. Herman R. Radtke was born 7 April 1863, but he was not a copy of original documents. There needs to be a distinct break between the personal details for Radtke and the point where you shift to a discussion of the record’s provenance. That distinct break is made by using a semicolon—just as you use a semicolon to create a distinct break between your discussion of the record’s provenance and your identification of the archive.

Provenance:

Without seeing the document and whatever cover letter or email message transmitted it, I’m stabbing in the dark, here. Other readers of your citation will be also. After naming the individual document, you say:

“copy of original documents, loose documents in alphabetical order, unpaginated.

Are you saying that

• the archive has a copy of those original documents, which are loose documents arranged in alpha order?
• or that you have a copy of that original document—in which case, where and how did you get it?

This pair of questions points  back to Issue No. 2, your apparent lack of details about where in the archive the record is found.  Is this a situation in which

• the archive sent you a copy of the document;
• the archive wrote a cover message saying the document is part of a batch of original documents, arranged alphabetically; but did not give you specific details?

If the latter, then all you can do is

• Layer 1: name the document and pinpoint the relevant detail;
• Layer 2: state that a copy of the document was provided by ....;
• Layer 3: cite whatever information the provider told you about where the document is to be found.

4.

Your citation ends with an “access” date. Access dates are typically used for citations to online material that can undergo change. (EE 2.37) In this case, if someone searched for and then mailed (or emailed) those documents to you, then adding an access date would leave an erroneous impression that you had actually accessed the collection at the archive, yourself.

So … all things considering, would you like to do a second draft of that citation?

Ah, yes, Tami. You definitely gave us an interesting example to work through. Thanks for supplying an image and the additional details.  Let’s “think through” what we have, again.

Beginning point

Your image actually bears the stamped word “copy” and appears to be an old stamp telling us that it was only a copy of something somewhere else. It also tells us that the form was to be filled out in triplicate. Obviously, one of the triplicates was kept locally. It does not tell us who was to receive the other two copies; but, given that it is headed “United States of America, Department of Justice,” it’s clear that there would be at least one copy at the federal level.  That federal copy could have additional information that does not appear on the copy filed locally.

At https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/documented-rights/exhibit/section3/detail/alien-enemy-registration.html, I found a sample with an identification of the NARA record group and its NAI. This registration begins like yours, but it depicts more than what is shown on your copy (although the History Center may have imaged yours in parts). Also, when we click the NAI, we find an even larger file for that particular registrant: 8 pages.  How many pages did you receive for the local file?

Archives.gov also identifies more related files at https://www.archives.gov/files/calendar/genealogy-fair/2014/handouts/session-16-handout-2of3-burnes-records-from-othe-national-archives-facilities.pdf.

Name of the Collection & Creator

Usually today, when an archive supplies records without a citation, we can find online at the archives’ website a catalog of its holdings, which would identify the collection.  In this case, the website is much more minimalistic than we might expect for a “History Center.” I found no catalog. Using the query box on its “Collections” page turned up nothing. Seeing that it offered a blog, I queried the blog page to see if these records had been discussed.  There, I found this:

It tells us about a 1977 article that might be of value to you. It also references the collection generically, in lower case, as “1917 ‘enemy Alien’ registration files,” but tells us nothing more.

Googling for the the phrase used in the blog post led to this:

Here, the APCL's Genealogy Center offers a database to a 1974 set of abstracts from those files. The background discussion for the database provides a formal name for the collection. Notice that it appears in quotation marks, and each word is capitalized as appropriate for the formal title of a collection: “Enemy Alien Registration Files.”  Note that it also states “created by the Fort Wayne Police Department.” 

The Allen County INGenWeb Project also has a useful discussion at https://www.acgsi.org/genweb/people/german-heritage-of-allen-county-indiana.html#logo. It, too, treats the Fort Wayne Police Department as the creator.

From all this, it appears appropriate to identify the FWPD as the creator or a set of records that it created in triplicate, sending at least one of the copies to the U.S. Department of Justice. 

All of this leads back to the basic citation principle: We cite what we use. If we were using records from the U.S. Department of Justice, held by the National Archives, we would cite the U.S. Department of Justice as the creator of the file or collection that we used. That would include the copy of the document sent to the feds by the ACPD. But, if we are using a copy of the record created and maintained by the ACPD, then we would cite the ACPD as the creator.

3.Custodian of the records

We have a set of government-created loose papers that are no longer in the custody of the original creator. They are now archived offsite. 

4. Drafting a citation

EE's chapter 10, Local & State Records, at 10.31 Basic Formats: Loose Papers ... offsite,  provides examples we can draw from. Given that you did visit the History Center to consult the records and that you requested a copy while there—but the center did not prove an archival citation to the collection—EE 10.31’s example 2 (probate records archived offsite at the Clay County, Missouri, Historical Library where records are not formally cataloged) would be an appropriate example to follow:

Fort Wayne (Indiana) Police Department, “Enemy Alien Registration Files,” loose records arranged alphabetically, Herman R. Radtke born 7 April 1863; archived at Allen County Historical Society History Center, Fort Wayne.

You will note that, before the name “History Center,” I’ve also included the identity of the organization that runs the History Center.  This harks back to my earlier comment about identifying the organization or agency when citing “Department of Justice.”  Many groups offer a “History Center” and many NGO’s and governments today have a “Department of Justice.” The words are generic; thus we add the name of the agency to which it belongs.  In the case of this “History Center,” a fuller identification is especially needed because so many new researchers confuse it with Fort Wayne’s “Genealogy Center” maintained by the Allen County Public Library. 

Thanks for the update, Tami. We're all learning from your query. As for your first paragraph: We've all been there and done that.