The Price of Love

Here's a crazy footnote to women's rights in the early 20th century.  Under the Expatriation Act of March 2, 1907, all women acquired their husband's nationality upon any marriage occurring after that date. This meant that U.S.-born citizen women (like my grandmother who'd been born in Butternut, Wisconsin in 1897) would now lose their citizenship by marriage to any alien...which is exactly what happened when she married my immigrant grandfather in 1916.  My American born Grandmother suddenly became an Italian in the eyes of the law!  This law was eventually changed in 1922 and henceforth, any American woman who married an alien after this date retained her US citizenship.  (My research seems to indicate that women being given the right to vote in 1920 had a lot to do with that; why disenfranchise a new group of voters?)  But it was too late for Grandma and she had to file the necessary papers to become an American citizen. 

This was all unknown to me as I grew up and I only learned this fact within the last few years as I researched my family tree and unearthed documents like the one below.  I have no earthly idea why she waited another 24 years to become a citizen, unless the rumblings of war in Europe helped change her mind.  But as it was that my Italian-born grandfather was also not naturalized until even later, in April of 1944, I am totally at a loss to explain any of this.

September 25, 1940 Oshkosh Northwestern