No. 125.
Mr. Everett to Mr. Frelinghuysen.
Berlin, April 12, 1884. (Received April 26.)
Sir: I have the honor to report the refusal of a passport on the ground of illegal naturalization of the applicant. The facts are as follows:
On the 27th of February last the consul at Dresden forwarded the inclosed duplicate passport application of Sigismund Jacoby, wife, and five children, by which it appears that he was born in Prussia in 1844, emigrated in 1862, at the age of eighteen, to the United States, and after a residence there of only about four years was naturalized in the court of common pleas at New York, on the 11th October, 1866, as appears by his citizen paper. As the issue of a passport was refused by the minister without some satisfactory explanation of the above statement, Mr. Jacoby came to Berlin and verbally informed me that he was perfectly aware at the time he was naturalized that he had been only four years in the United States, but that he was a member of a political club, and at election time he was sworn in, with several others, in order to vote, and supposed that the court knew what the law was. He objected to having his papers taken from him, as he is about to return to South America, where he resides. I have refused to issue him a passport without intructions to that effect from the Department, to which the case is now respectfully referred.
I have, &c.,