Lineage worksheet
Map your line, generation by generation
Most refusals come down to one date in the wrong order: a naturalization before a birth, or a mother before 1948. Enter each person from the ancestor down to you and the worksheet flags the dates that matter for the country you pick.
Example data: replace it with your family
Everything stays in this browser (localStorage). Use Export to keep a copy or move it to another device. Dates can be a year (1921) or a full date (1921-03-14). Next step: the document checklist.
How to fill in the worksheet
- Start with the ancestor born abroad. Use “Add an older generation” until the oldest card is the person born in the country you picked. You are the last card.
- Enter the dates you can prove. Birth, marriage, emigration and naturalization dates come from certificates, not family memory. If you only know the year, enter the year; the worksheet treats it as a range and says when a full date would change the answer.
- Tick the documents you already hold. Each card tracks the birth, marriage, death and naturalization records for that person, so you can see the gaps.
- Read the flags. Green means the timing looks fine, amber means a date needs checking or an exception may apply, and red means a rule usually breaks the line at that point.
The dates that break most claims
- Naturalization before the next birth. In Italy, Germany and Poland, an ancestor who became a US citizen before their child was born usually did not pass citizenship to that child. For Poland the rule ran until January 19, 1951, and the loss also reached children who were minors at the time.
- Citizenship through a mother. Italy did not let a mother pass citizenship to a child born before January 1, 1948, so those lines need a court case. Germany's rules excluded many children of German mothers born before 1975, which a free Section 5 declaration can now fix until August 19, 2031.
- Leaving too early. German emigrants who left before about 1904 could lose citizenship after ten years abroad. Poles who left before the modern state existed were subjects of Russia, Germany or Austria-Hungary, not Polish citizens.
- Generation limits. Italy now generally stops at a grandparent for new claims, and Ireland at a grandparent born on the island unless your parent was registered first.
Where to find the dates
Naturalization dates are in USCIS and court files; the USCIS genealogy request helper explains how to order them. Birth and marriage dates abroad come from the town or parish where the event happened, and the record request letters write that request in the registry's language. Census returns and ship manifests often give an emigration year and a naturalization status, which helps you know which records to order.
The worksheet covers the same 12 countries as our eligibility check. For Austria, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain it checks the main dates only, such as emigration before a state existed or a generation limit. Read the full rules on the country pages.