Just how good will the info be?
A great question came in yesterday from reader Jon Federman — and boy, does it need an answer everyone can see.
It has to do with the information recorded on the SS-5 — that application for a social security number that’s so important to so many of us in trying to track down family information.
It’s one document where we know the applicant was supposed to list critical information like date and place of birth and even the names of the parents.
It’s also one document that doesn’t come free: the current fee is $27 if you know the social security number and $29 if you don’t provide the number.1
It can take a long time, often months, between the time you make a request and the time the document comes in, and even if you do everything right, you may not get all the information you want because of privacy rules.2
So, Jon said, he had a big question before he spent the time and money to order a record:
Was there any requirement of specificity when listing place of birth for foreign-born applicants? For example, I know my grandfather was born in Poland – do you think he would have been required to list a city or town – or would “Poland” have been sufficient for someone born outside the US?
Now … any and all of us struggling to track our foreign-born relatives back to a town of origin can all wish the answer to Jon’s question was an unequivocal yes. Wouldn’t it be nice if each and every applicant had to list everything down to the street address of the birthplace?
But, alas, that simply wasn’t the case.
Yes, the application form called for the birthplace and, ultimately, for the city, county and state of birth.
But no, no matter what the form said, the Social Security Administration didn’t bounce an application where the foreign-born applicant didn’t list anything more than a country of birth.
I can say that with absolute certainty because I have an example in my own family:
My grandfather’s sister Elly simply listed Germany as her birthplace when she got her social security number in 1951.
So… Jon’s grandfather might have listed a city or district in Poland… but then again he might not have.
You pays your money and you takes your chances…
SOURCES
- See “FOIA Request Methods and Fees : Fees for Frequently Requested Records,” Social Security Administration (https://www.ssa.gov/ : accessed 4 Jan 2016). ↩
- See Judy G. Russell, “Ordering the SS-5,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 31 May 2013 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 4 Jan 2016). ↩
You just never know with the SS-5. A client’s ancestor, for the question of father, named a “Smith,” but a notation in the margins added, “His mother was never married to ‘Smith’ but married ‘Jones’ and he always carried the name ‘Jones.'” You’ve gotta love those folks who took the application questions seriously!
Now THAT is a a fabulous note!!
I have receive two S-5 Applications in the last week.
One confirmed the place of birth when census records oscillated between Oregon and Alaska on the 1920, 1930, and 1940 Census. Portland, Oregon was on the S-5 but I recognize this is not an actual primary source.
The S-5 has the mother’s maiden name and normally I am always looking for a mother’s maiden name. In this case I cannot confirm whether the parents were actually married and if the mother was using the husbands last name. The two girls are never on the census records with their parents. They are always Boarders (Age 12 & 15), Roomers (age 22 & 25) , or Married w/ Spouse (age 32 & 35). No sign of the family on the 1910 Census.
I also received the Father’s S-5 but there is no spouse info on the S-5. I have not found the father on any Census records as an adult and no information on the mother’s name at all.
You certainly have a challenge on your hands, but I do want to comment on one thing you said: “this is not an actual primary source.” Sources are the records themselves, and they’re considered original, derivative or authored depending on how they were created and preserved. An SS-5 is an original record (even though what you’re being given is a photocopy). The information contained in the SS-5 is what would be characterized as original or secondary or undetermined based on who said it and whether that person was an eyewitness or just reporting what someone else said. So you have what’s probably secondary information (what the person was told about where he was born) in an original record.
There are other problems with just a country of birth. The question arises, “was actual birth within the borders of said country at the time birth or that the time of application?” Secondly, “Is this location in in the same country today?” Germany, Poland, and other European powers are rife with border changes in the last 150+ years. A series census records list one of my relatives’ German birth location four different ways.
Tell me about it! My grandfather was born in what was then a tiny principality called Reuss jüngerer Linie (Reuss younger line). His records say Germany, Reuss, Reuss j.L., and so many others…
Do you still recommend sending for the SS5 form if the person in question is listed in the Social Security Claims Index online through Ancestry?
Always. There’s always a chance that there will be information in the SS-5 that isn’t available anywhere else. So I would always recommend getting it — as part of our reasonably exhaustive research into the life of the subject.
Place of birth also would vary based on the person’s perceptions.
I have one ancestor who arrived in the USA around 1900, and through the next 20 years, their place of birth would change. It was first Galicia, a small country that collapsed around that time (and is now largely within the Southern border of Poland and a bit in Ukraine). World War I then broke out. His place of birth then became Austria. Then Russia. Then Germany. And finally Poland. The city stayed the same, however.
However, another ancestor from the same area would always (defiantly?) list “Galicia” as their place of birth, even though the country had ceased to exist.
Like my grandfather who often said Reuss long after there was no such principality!
A thought just occurred to me.
SS-5s are now filled out (most of the time?) at birth by the parents.
I believe they’re also filled out by adoptive parents.
I know that you can only order a copy of SS-5s for deceased people, and can’t order your own. However, what happens to the original SS-5s in cases of adoptions?
I’m curious whether a researcher who requests the SS-5 of an individual who had two SS-5s – one before and one after adoption – would get both, or just the latter?
While you can’t order your own SS-5, you can probably make a Freedom of Information Act request for it in writing anyway. And I don’t know of any case of a deceased adoptee where an SS-5 has been requested so I can’t answer the rest.
History has a way of making this a difficult question to answer. My mother’s maternal ancestors are German, but immigration and census records show that they were born in Russia. Which is also no longer correct, because they were from German colonies in what’s now the Ukraine.
As well, specific addresses (or as close to what might pass for one) might be hard to figure out, too, what with changing names of towns and streets over time. As well, our concept of an address isn’t always the same. Back in the day in the Netherlands, your house number didn’t correspond to a street, but to a “wijk”, a neighbourhood or small district within a town.
If I were making a request like this, I would try to be as broad as possible, using the term that my ancestors might have used for their country of origin. For the branch of my mother’s family that briefly spent a generation in Texas before emigrating once again, I’d simply put “Russia”, because that’s what they would most likely have called the place they were born.
Fortunately, we don’t have to have the POB to order this record, Sean: the name and Social Security Number alone gets it.
I obtained my mother’s SS-5 several years after she died and was quite surprised that (1) her parents’ names were redacted (even though they’d been dead for 30-40 years), and (2)someone other than her provided the information (a note says her “former employer” filled out the form).
The redactions are annoying, but expected under the SSA’s privacy rule (discussed here). These days I always order on paper with as much info as possible to avoid the redactions. And I’ve seen a bunch of SS-5s that were all typed by one employer. Not even sure the employees were the ones who signed ’em!
I am very lucky. I happen to notice the other day something that I had forgotten that both my German grandparents have a full place of birth listed n there SS-5. That said it is not Germany. My grandfather aka Opa was listed as Ait-Arzis, Roumania and my grandmother aka Oma as Hartsfeld-Damischwar, Roumania. I have not really researched this family since my mother was born in Germany so I know easy access to information in records is not the case.
Both also have the parents names and on my Oma’s there is also a note next to her name that she took her mothers surname.
Dear Christine,
It sounds as though your family were Bessarabian-Black Sea (not Volga) Germans from Russia. Alt-Arzis was founded in 1816, under Russian rule. After WWI, the western part of Bessarabia, separated by the Dneister River, was ceded to Romania by Russia. The Soviets invaded the region after the Nazi-USSR pact of 1939. The Nazis evacuated many of the remaining G-Rs to the Wartgau region of occupied Poland (The Long Trek), where their ancestors had started from about 150 years earlier!! In late 1944 as the Nazis were losing the war, many G-R old men, women & children fled to the Western allies to avoid the Red Army. Unfortunately, nearly 3/4 of the refugees in the Allies’ areas were handed over to the Soviets, under the secret Yalta agreements. Most of the returnees wound up in the Siberian gulag…Perhaps your mother was one of the lucky ones to stay in the West…
Taking the mother’s surname was sometimes an indicator that the child was born outside of marriage & the father was unknown or had been imprisioned by the authorities & unavailable to marry the impending mother.
As for Hartsfeld-Damischwar, Temeschwar in German, was the capital of the Romanian Banat region (more inland than Bessarabia). Perhaps Hartsfeld was the particular village your people were from.
Here are some helpful websites — Germans from Russia Heritage Society (GHRS) — http://www.ghrs.org & Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe — http://www.sggee.org & for fun — “Mein Madel ist aus Temeschwar” on the U-Tube!!