JewishGen Discussion Group #JewishGen Re: Citizenship in less than 5 years? - Lying bout age #general
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Joseph Hirschfield
It was fairly common to misstate one's age, especially for women and
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especially after 1920. An unmarried women in her twenties was already considered a spinster, an unpleasant appellation. Also some women were older than their husbands. This was a no no in American culture. Also with changes in the immigration law after 1920, an unmarried child over 21 could not be brought to America under his/her father's naturalization. Frequently married men arrived in the US first, and brought over their wives and children after establishing a nest egg. Sometimes there was a delay, such as in my grandfather's case because of WWI and the Russian revolution, so that by the time the family was available to come over, it was after 1920 and my grandfather was already a citizen. He could only bring over unmarried children under 21. Therefore, like dominos, some of the children's ages were reduced so that even the older ones could be designated to be less than 21. Joseph Hirschfield Portage, MI HIRSCHFELD, HERSZFELD,BUXBAUM, BUCHBAUM,LINDENBAUM-Skwarzawa, Sielec Bienkow, Glinyany, Jaryczow Nowy-GALICIA MINOFF, MINOWICKI-Brest Litovsk, (V)Wysoko-Litovsk-BELARUS
In a message dated 1/24/2012 12:33:40 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
lavie@netvision.net.il writes: I have been having an offline correspondence with someone >from the group who claims these are honest mistakes. However, I have found that the "honest mistakes" always made the date of immigration earlier and the year of birth earlier. Were they random, honest mistakes, then you would expect the mistake to go either way 50% of the time.
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