USCIS C-File for Morris Goldstein

About a year ago, I shared the Certificate of Citizenship for my husband's grandfather, Morris Goldstein. It was a re-issued certificate for one that had been lost. I was confused because there were several facts on this certificate that conflicted with what I already knew about Morris.

Emily Garber of (going) the Extra Yad asked if I had applied for Morris' file with the USCIS genealogy program. I decided this was a good idea and started the process a few weeks after that blog post.

A C-File is a Certificate File, which documents an individual's naturalization. C-Files contain copies of records that show the granting of naturalized U.S. citizenship by courts between 1906 and 1956.

The first place to go is USCIS / Genealogy.

I first requested an index search in case there was more than one file number. It turns out that the number on the Certificate of Citizenship was the one file number that was returned: 984234. It took a little over three months to get this.

A little more than four months after submitting the request for the C-File, I received the twelve photocopied pages in the mail. I scanned the images and did my best to transcribe them.

It confirmed for me that yes, this Morris Goldstein (known as Pop-pop to his grandchildren) was mixed up with another Morris Goldstein of Rhode Island.

Certificate of Citizenship for Morris Goldstein

In April, when we visited my parents-in-law for Passover, my mother-in-law remembered that she had found something that she wanted me to have: her father's certificate of citizenship!

It turns out that this is a replacement for one that must have been "lost, mutilated, or destroyed."