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  1. #1
    Valued member of Brit-Gen barbara lee's Avatar
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    Default Alexander Harry Richards, a phoney American?

    Hello all

    I have a puzzle about my mother’s cousin Alexander Harry Richards. He was a seaman in the US Merchant service in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and I have a US “Seaman’s Protection certificate” from 1936 (when they were newly introduced, I think) saying he was a US citizen and giving as evidence a US Army Honorable Discharge document from 1927 from San Francisco. (You will need a worldwide sub or credits on A** to see much of this.)

    The only trouble is, I don’t think he was an American at all, he was British. I know he was born in Southampton and he wasn't naturalised until 1946 in San Francisco. So why would a British sailor say he was American? Was it easier to get a job? Did he get better pay? Or are there two men with similar ages and names?

    My Alexander Harry was born on 10th January 1900 in Portswood, Southampton, son of Arthur Thomas Richards and Kate Hobley Dempsey (who were probably not married). I have his birth certificate, which definitely gives his middle name as Harry, not Henry. He was in the Royal Navy when he was a teenager (I have a photo of him with a cap ribbon from HMS Otway and an engineering propellor insignia on his sleeve). Then he disappeared from my mother’s life. Soon afterwards this “American” appeared in US records, with the same name, same date of birth, the same parents, working as a deck engineer (and the photo on the seamen’s protection certificate looks right, too).

    I have lots of other info about him – sailing records, US census records (he apparently appeared three times on the US 1930 census), a marriage to an Esther Luciano in 1929 and so on. On some of those records he claimed to have been born in Wilkes-Barre, PA, but either the date of birth he gave or his distinctive parents’ names seem to identify him as my mother’s cousin.

    Was he working some kind of fiddle? Or were there two men with the same date of birth, same parents’ names, (and what appears to be the same face, about 20 years older)?

    Barbara

  2. #2
    Valued member of Brit-Gen barbara lee's Avatar
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    Default

    I think this query might have been "lost in the wash", so I'm giving it a nudge, just in case.

    My question is, was there a reason for a British man to claim he was a US citizen, while working in the US merchant fleet in the 1930s? Did he get better pay or access to more work?

    My general impression is that merchant seamen were a multi-national and multi-ethnic bunch, and that anyone of any nationality could work at anything, for any nation, if they were competent and qualified. Or is that not true?

    Barbara

  3. #3
    Super Moderator christanel's Avatar
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    Hi Barbara
    thanks for bumping up your post. although I really can't help much at all.
    Just a thought, maybe his claim of being a US citizen wasn't related to his occupation but to the US legal system regarding immigrants. This may help (or not)

    Christina
    Sometimes paranoia is just having all the facts.
    William Burroughs

  4. #4
    Valued member of Brit-Gen barbara lee's Avatar
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    Thanks for that, Christina. I hadn't thought about general immigration, because he was usually away at sea, so I hadn't thought it relevant. But it might be that, as you say. The laws introduced in 1921, although giving the English a big quota, may not have included him. Perhaps he was away at sea when the applications had to go in so he missed an opportunity.
    Barbara

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