Queens Court begins effort to digitize centuries-old naturalization records

“The records like the first churches and businesses in Queens are falling apart, and I want to be able to save them,” Raymond Weaver said. Eagle photo by Rachel Vick.

By Rachel Vick

At the bottom of an unassuming staircase in the main clerk’s office in the Queens Supreme Court are rows of records dating back to the 1700s.

This week, Raymond Weaver and a team from St. John’s University will officially begin the task of digitizing the naturalization records stored in the Queens court’s archive. 

Though they only received the three-year federal grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission in December, Weaver knew the project was worthwhile regardless. He reached out to St. John’s early in the planning process and received support from Kristin Szylvian, who heads the program for Master of Library and Information Science and certification in Archives management.

The optimism and initial excitement surrounding the project was largely due to how topical it felt, Weaver said.

“I think it's really because of the atmosphere, the environment right now, about immigration and naturalization,” Weaver said. “We’re about to open the door to this whole new part of history that people have always had access to, they just didn’t know they had access to it.”

Interns from St. John’s University Master’s of Library Science program are working alongside Weaver’s team on the naturalization record project. Photo courtesy of Raymond Weaver.

There are over 600 bound volumes across the two boroughs and close to 1 million pages in total — some are over 200 years old. Most of the first two years will be spent imaging, but once that’s done the team will dive headfirst into community outreach with partners like SJU and the Queens Public Library.

A group of interns from the university began work to organize the materials and go through some of the oldest naturalization papers, which were unbound and badly stored. Several returned this semester out of personal interest and commitment to seeing the project through.

Students have been working to document the loose records, and are coming across unique finds along the way, like the the first woman to be naturalized without her husband and a KGB spy from Russia that had a letter requesting he be granted citizenship, Weaver said.

“[It’s nice] seeing them get excited about it but also realizing that they're going to continue to push this information out and make it relevant — we can continue to shine a light on naturalization,” Weaver said. “We’ve got people in their 20s trying to find a way to combine current tech with older records to make them accessible.”

Weaver said he and the interns have fun speculating about what methods the earliest clerks might have used to file records, where practices often changed depending on the staff before the federal government passed the Naturalization Act.

Though the Queen’s office is overseeing the project, efforts also include the records from the Bronx, where County Clerk Terry Torres offered her support and interest during the proposal phase. The team will shift to the Bronx after imaging everything from Queens.

They chose an outside agency that had experience working with records that “all but fall apart in your hands,” like the oldest ones in the archives, to handle the actual scanning.

The earliest records, like this one from 1799, were basically written “however they wanted to,” said Raymond Weaver. Eagle photo by Rachel Vick

“How long are [the records] really gonna hold up?” Weaver said. “I want people to be able to see them before we come down one day and they’re just gone. That’s why step one is digital preservation and step two is figuring out a way to have people see them.“

In some cases, the project will provide more than just an outline of a family’s history — later records include photographs that may be the only existing images of family members.

After everything is scanned, members of the public will be able to access the records as high quality images without the help of clerk staff. Weaver said he hopes to set up specific terminals within the court so that people without internet access will be able to sit down research their genealogy and “take ownership of their own history.” 

People will still be able to access their records during the process, and will likely get the higher resolution documents when the scanning agency is able to send a specific piece.

“I just want [the records] out there and available, because I think it’s such a cool resource,” Weaver said. “Not only do people get to know where they came from, but they can have physical documentation.”