by Sherri Mastrangelo, 20 January 2025
A follow up to this post - Passenger Lists: The Meaning behind the Notations, Abbreviations, and Marks
A reader recently sent in a great example of a Certificate of Arrival number on a passenger arrival list, along with the corresponding COA, so it’s a great time to revisit this set of naturalization numbers.
See Anna’s Passenger Arrival Record on FamilySearch and her Certificate of Arrival
In the above example, we see the COA number is written on the passenger list, followed by the date the Certificate of Arrival was issued in 1939.
What is a Certificate of Arrival? For ancestors that arrived after the year 1906 (when the Basic Naturalization Act went into effect), a Certificate of Arrival was created during the naturalization application process. This was often many years later, as the ancestor would have requested this document as proof of their arrival in order to file the Declaration of Intent and later petition for citizenship. This document usually includes more information about your ancestor (and possibly alternative name spellings!) At the time of its creation, the COA number was written on the passenger list by the immigration clerk.
The COA number is an important part of information, as it can be supporting evidence that links naturalization paperwork and passenger lists. This can be especially helpful when the handwriting on a passenger list is hard to read for example, or if you’re not sure if the passenger list belongs to your ancestor. Information in the linked COA can help you determine this.
Note: on passenger lists prior to 1906, when the Certificate of Arrival was not required, you may still see “CL” abbreviation for Certificate of Landing. Also of note, if an ancestor could not be linked to their passenger record by the immigration clerk, you may see marks like “No CA” or “No C/A”.
You may come across a COA while searching naturalization records, as it is often included in the C-File - but not always.
This COA number is NOT the same as a person’s naturalization number. You will note it does not match the number in the top right corner of the Declaration of Intent, though it does appear later in the form.
Both of these numbers appear again below on the Petition for Naturalization form:
The USCIS Genealogy Program allows you to request your ancestor’s C-File for a fee, though it may be handled by the National Archives (NARA) post 2024, which also handles Alien Registration forms, or the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for records post 1956.
Visit the USCIS website for more information about Certificate Files, or C-Files (1906 - 1956), Alien Registration Forms (1940 to 1944), Visa Files (1924 - 1944), Registry Files (1929 - 1944), and A-Files (1944 - 1951).
In some records, like this example on FamilySearch, I noticed the Certificate of Arrival number is shown on the details index of the search screen:
While it matches our COA number in this case, I think the AI is just pulling the certificate number from the first form in the file, and it won’t always match. But it does tell us this number might match sometimes, and might be indexed and therefore searchable.
So how do we search FamilySearch by a possible Certificate number? Say we found the COA on a passenger list, and want to quickly find the Naturalization paperwork. Is it possible?
I’ll show you the ways I tested this in my next post!
And thank you to Parker G. for sharing his findings and examples!