Q 01 - Posted May 2006 by P Hoffman. Trying to find my grandfather’s naturalisation papers. Do you have any advice on where to look for them please ?

A 01 I understand from your letter that your grandfather came from Germany in the mid 19th century (1863). The first thing to note is that there are two avenues we must examine and these are “denization” and “naturalisation”. Taking these in turn :-

Denization- almost equivalent to native-born people and granted the individual most of a free-subjects rights, and the protection of the king’s law. This was granted by Letters Patent from the Crown which are enrolled in (C 66) covering the period 1201 to 2004.

Naturalisation- granted an individual all rights and made them subjects of the Crown. In 1844 the process was simplified and the Home Office began granting certificates of naturalisation, after initial investigations had been concluded satisfactorily. Naturalisation papers for 1844 to 1871 can be found in (H 01), an on-line index searchable by surname. For the period 1844 to 1873 the deeds of naturalisation were enrolled in the Close Rolls (C 54). From 1870 to 1969 duplicate copies are in (HO 334)

It should be noted that the majority of aliens did not bother to go through the legal formalities and so do not appear in the governments records. It was fairly common for people to declare themselves,in the census, as naturalised citizens when they were not. Aliens arriving in England and Scotland between 1836 and 1869 were required to sign Certificates of Arrival. However these only survive for 1836 to 1852 (HO 2) and are indexed only to 1849 (HO 5/25-32). Between 1836 and 1869 masters of ships were required to send lists of alien passengers to the Home Office (HO3), these are bound in date order but not indexed. There are also records of correspondence on aliens (HO 5) {The above details are taken from “Tracing your Ancestors in the National Archives", 7th Edition by Amanda Bevan (ISBN 1 903365 89 2). The references in (brackets) refer to files in the National Archives at Kew. }.

Download a copy of the free Guide entitled “Naturalisation and Citizenship – Grant of British Nationality”. This is issued by the National Archives and can be accessed by clicking on the following www.nationalarchives

Another resource which might be useful will be found at www.movinghere which is a resource produced by historians and others from material held at archives and museums from around England.

A specialist guide to immigration and citizenship is the National Archive’s publication “Immigrants and Aliens” by Kershaw and Pearsall (ISBN 1903365627)