Salt Lake City - Day 1 recap

We woke up Monday to snow flurries, which continued throughout the morning. The temperature remained cold, so there is still a couple of inches on the ground this morning. I spent yesterday looking for US records - I just wasn't ready to tackle Polish records and the Belgium films won't arrive from the vault until this afternoon.

I started by looking for the naturalization records for Simon Jellen and his family. I found his son Joseph in the index - he was naturalized on March 6, 1933 in San Francisco. He is living at SF Hospital - probably because he was doing his residency there? I haven't found the actual papers, as the film needs to be ordered from the vault.

I found Simon in the Southern California index, along with Lily. I still haven't found Morris. Simon filed his declaration of intention (the first step of the naturalization process) on May 22, 1924. His first petition for naturalization (step 2) was filed on August 25, 1926 and denied on December 3, 1926. The reason listed on the petition was "loyalty is not satisfactory". Huh? His second petition was filed on November 1, 1929 and referenced this first denial, the reason now given simply as "draft record". Based on this, I am guessing that Simon either didn't know that he was supposed register for the WW1 draft (it was mandatory even for non-citizens) or purposefully didn't register. He had arrived in the US in 1916 and I'm not even sure if he was living in NY or had already moved west to San Francisco (where he lived prior to moving to LA). I'm going to search the WW1 records to see if I can find anything there.

Simon finally obtained his naturalization on February 14, 1930 and Lily obtained hers on July 11, 1930.

I also found my husband Steve's paternal grandparents marriage license and from that discovered his great-grandmother's maiden name - Eva Zwarkin (sp?). I started doing some work on his mother's line (RIKLIN) and found his maternal grandparent's Jake and Tillie in the census living with another Riklin family Abraham and Bessie and their two kids. Right now I'm working on the hypothesis that Abraham and Jake are either brothers or cousins. Lots more work to do on this line!

It's off to the library for a very full day of work!