Genealogy Chat

I am seeking help about a very complicated family situation. My great grandfather and his siblings came to England from Poland around 1871. However, one of his sisters, Fanny, married an Austrian-Polish national in London (the borders changed a lot before the First World War, which is why he must have considered himself Austrian-Polish. Today he would have been considered Polish.)

Fanny and Davis’ great grandson has inherited their Identity Books dated 12/10/1918. As they could not write, information on the Identity Books was filled out by a third party. On Fanny’s book, according to what was written, it seems on her marriage in 1877 that she went from Polish to being an Austrian National or perhaps she just thought this? Can anybody clarify:

1. Would it be common in 1877 for a wife to automatically take her husband’s nationality on marriage? In the Identity Book the word “Russian” is crossed out and “Austrian” is put in its place. Yet this could be a mistake, as there is at least one other factual error made by the person writing in the Identity Book.
2. During WW1, Poland seemed to be run by the Germans and Russians, who were on different sides of the war, so I am not sure if Poles living in the UK at the time would have been considered enemy aliens or not. Clarification please.
3. Would my great-grandparents, born in Poland, had to have had Identity Books during WW1?
4. Finally, who would have issued these Identity Books during WWI and are there any records of who received them?

Any assistance in this matter would be appreciated. Thank you.

Welcome to the boards Sandra.

There's only one question I could answer.
A woman took her nationality first from her father, then once she married, she assumed her husbands. As far as the law was concerned, she was his 'property'.

The first National Registration was taken during the First World War. The context was a fierce debate raging in the War Cabinet between those ministers willing to consider conscription and those who wanted to continue the policy of voluntarism. The argument turned on knowing the number of men within the population available to fight, and existing statistics were judged to be insufficiently accurate. Remarkably, given that this was essentially a census-type question, the Cabinet decided to resolve the matter through the introduction of national registration. Under the National Registration Bill, introduced by the President of the Local Government Board, Walter Long, in July 1915, personal information on all the adult population was compiled in locally-held registers, and identity cards were issued.

http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/identity-cards-in-britain-past-experience-and-policy-implications

If the source records have survived, they'd probably be held by the nearest Archive to the address.

As DetEcTive says, the answer to Q1 is Yes. Even today foreign nationals sometimes marry Brits when their visas expire - it's a popular storyline in soaps!!

Q3 is also Yes, because everyone did.

Q4 is the GRO. I don't know about records.

This link gives a detailed account of them, but it's quite heavy-going. :-( :-(

EDIT Sorry, I forgot the link!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2574002/

Thank you both for your information and clarification. The link was very interesting.

The taking of a husband's nationality still occurs with some countries.

I cannot become Canadian by marrying a Canadian. I can earn the right to emigrate to or stay in Canada, and I think that is the case in England. I can only become Canadian (if not born here) by taking out Canadian citizenship, which involves passing an exam, and swearing allegiance to the Queen :-D

However, my late sis-i-law ended up with 3 citizenships ............... English by birth, Swiss by marriage, and Canadian by taking out her citizenship.

The Swiss citizenship was particularly interesting because a) her children were eligible for support from the Swiss government after her husband's early death, and b) an obscure bureaucrat in an office somewhere in Switzerland discovered, almost 20 years after the event , that her husband had died and therefore she was eligible for a widow's pension! They couldn't repay her all the missing years ......... but she did get a lump sum to cover the last 5 years, plus a monthly pension after that!

The southern part of modern Poland, around Krakov and Lvov, was the Austrian province of Galicia. In the 1830s and later, following failed serf revolts in the Russian part of Poland, many Poles fled the Russian part, and settled in Galicia (the Austrian part of Poland). Galicia was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the UK was at war with Austro-Hungary during WW1.

Thank you both for your response. Yes indeed Fanny's husband was born in Crakow/Krakov. It is interesting to know which side of the First World War it was on as it adds clarification.

Getting back to my Polish great grandparents who came from Kalisz, as Fanny did, I wish I could find out if they also had any form of ID during WW1, but I think that seems quite unlikely now.

If they were in the UK, then yes they would have. Its a case of trying to track down where the original records are held, assuming they haven't been destroyed.

Thank you for the clarification. Yes, the problem is now one of record location DelEcTive. It might have been that other members of my g-grandfather's family inherited the ID cards or if records were kept in the East End, where my g-grandparents lived, the offices where they were kept might well have been bombed in WW2 during the Blitz. I am beginning to think we will never know!

The original cards could easily have been thrown out; they'd have been a reminder of a terrible conflict and no longer needed once the war was over.

Although I've my father's WW2 ID card, thats the only one which remains from his family. Nothing what so ever from his parents either 1st or 2nd WW. As he was a single child, they wouldn't have been given to anyone else.

We don't have a definate answer to where the original source material was stored. Contact Birmingham Archives for advise.
http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/archives

Thanks for your advice.

Czechoslovakia was part of Austria-Hangary.
Roughly, the Czech Republic part was part of the Kingdom of Austria, and the Slovakia part was part of the Kingdom of Hungary.

Austria-Hangary lost abt 2/3 of its pre-WW1 area.
In addition to the newly created Czechoslovakia, the newly created Poland got Galicia.
Hungary lost Transylvania to Roumania, Austria lost Trentino (the Austrian Tyrol) and Istria and the Dalmatian coast to Italy, and Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Hungarian Croatia-Slovenia, which, along with the independent Kingom of Serrbia, formed the bulk of Yugoslavia.