Using A Naturalization Certificate to ID old photos/ Plus Learning more about Naturalization

I've spent the last week and a half waiting for the mail carrier to bring me a naturalization certificate with a photo of my great-aunt Mary Kappel. The mails are slow these days with odd gaps in the days when I receive mail. In the past I've never gone days without receiving mail like I do now.

Last fall I received a bunch of copies of old Kappel family photos. These are the first photos I've ever seen of my great-grandparents and their family. Most of the photos were unmarked. I was able to identify my great-grandmother, Mary Kurta-Kappel; otherwise, if the photos weren't marked I had no idea who was in them?

Since I now knew what my great-grandmother looked like from identified photos I had a vague idea of who was in the photo below. The back of the photo also says Koppel (which was how the name was spelled in their native Austro-Hungary). I've been to the village the family came from, in today's Inzenhof, Austria, so I recognized the place the photo was taken. It appears the photo was taken outside a typical local house. I also knew that she visited her family in Inzenhof in 1908, and didn't return to the United States until 1910. I inferred the identities of the children based on the names on the 1910 passenger list for the family.

Koppel from the back of the photo. Written in the local German Script. 

I assumed the eldest daughter in this photo was Mary Kappel, she was the eldest girl in the family, who also appeared on the passenger list returning to America. It was just an assumption because this photo could have been taken on another earlier visit in 1904 when Mary had previously returned for a visit? The children could have been her nieces and nephews?

1910 Passenger list.

When I compared the photo above, using facial recognition software, I got a match between the child I thought could be Mary, and the woman in the photo below. They were 99.7% alike. I assumed they both could be Mary? I had no positively identified photos of her though.

Using my access to Ancestry.com through the Los Angeles Public Library I found a naturalization for her. I had no idea she was required to naturalize? It was an accidental find when I was looking for anything they had on her. I thought the fact her father naturalized automatically gave her citizenship?

Yes, she had to naturalize because she was born in Austro-Hungary in 1900. Her father Frank didn't become a citizen until December 1926. If she had been under 18 when he became a citizen she would have automatically become a citizen (my grandfather Rudolph just made it under the wire. He turned 18 a few months after his father became a citizen).

It was good for my photo identification project that she did have to naturalize. Sometimes the Naturalization Petition had a photo of the applicant. Unfortunately in both the case of Mary and her mother neither petition contained a photo. If you want a photo, and the naturalization was during the time period photos were taken, then you have to obtain the Certificate of Naturalization which is generally only available through the US Citizenship and Immigration Services or USCIS.

You can apply for a copy of the C-File at the website, and it costs $65 for copies of the entire file which may contain several pages or just a couple. It's easiest to request a copy using the certificate number you can probably find either using an online index to naturalization records or by finding a copy of the actual naturalization online that contains the certificate number. Without the number you'll have to pay for both an index search and the document retrieval. If they search both the index and retrieve the documents the entire process can take over 1 year. With the certificate number it takes 2 or 3 months.

Since I tried to contact descendants of Mary Kappel who matched me on my AncestryDNA test and I never received a reply my only hope of identifying her in the unmarked photos would be through the photo on her certificate of naturalization. I forked over the $65 again (which is a bargain because they wanted to raise the price to $300) and waited for the documents. That was back in early May. I didn't seem to get the option to view the records online this time, like I did when I ordered my great-grandmother Mary's C-file? My request was completed July 14th, 2020. I gave it a few days before dashing to the mailbox every time I heard the mail carrier.

After over a week of running to the mailbox I decided to email USCIS and asked if I could possibly view the documents online like before? Someone was nice enough to email the documents to me ( just went out and checked my mail again and still no documents?)

Looking at the photo on the certificate I wasn't sure if the woman, and child, on my previous photos looked alike? They looked somewhat  alike to me. Using Familysearch.org "Compare-a-Face" and Amazon AWS Rekognition they appear to definitely be the same person. Compare-a-Face leaves no doubt with an 100% likeness.

Amazon AWS Rekognition is a little more exacting when it comes to comparisons, and I feel it's the gold standard for comparisons. Their likeness is 97.9%. I feel like anything over 95% means it's a virtual certainty the two photos are of the same person.

Now I can attach all of these photos to Mary Kappel-Breckinridge at both Ancestry and Familysearch.org with confidence. If any of her descendants believe I'm wrong they can always contact me.

I was thinking my days waiting for documents in the mail were gone? Not everything is online yet. Nice to finally relax and not have to wait for the mail carrier! That's over, for now.