Birthright Citizenship

By Rachel Dworkin

Birthright citizenship has been in the news lately thanks to President Trump’s recent Executive Order 14156. The order ends birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and legal migrants in the country on temporary work, student, or tourist visas. At present, nearly every country in North and South America has birthright citizenship, but the practice is rare in the rest of the world. Historically, its application in the United States has been…complicated.

Like most things about the American legal system, birthright citizenship in the United States has its roots in English common law. Traditionally, anyone born in the king’s domain was automatically a subject of the king, including anyone born in the Colonies. Following the American Revolution, a series of court cases confirmed that people born in the United States or its territories were automatically citizens…with exceptions. In Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), the Supreme Court held that the U.S. Constitution only granted citizenship to whites and no one of African descent, whether free or enslaved, born here or not, could ever be citizens.

Today, the Dred Scott decision is widely regarded as one of the worst rulings the Supreme Court ever made. It was effectively overturned by the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (adopted July 9, 1868). The clause states: 

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." 

Even following the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, there were questions about just who qualified when it came to birthright citizenship. In 1873, Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco, California to Chinese immigrant parents who were ineligible to become citizens themselves thanks to the Naturalization Law of 1802 which offered naturalization only to free whites. As a young man, Wong left to visit China and was subsequently denied re-entry to the United States upon his return thanks to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and a customs official’s refusal to acknowledge his citizenship. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court as United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). The court decided that the children of foreigners born on American soil were American citizens, whether the parents were eligible to become citizens or not. They made just four exceptions: children of foreign diplomats; children born on foreign public ships; children of enemy forces engaged in hostile occupation of the country’s territory, and children of Indian tribes (which were effectively considered sovereign peoples). This last exception was subsequently removed by the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 which granted citizenship to all Native Americans.  

 

Wong Kim Ark, ca. 1904 (courtesy of Wikipedia)

So how does one prove American citizenship? These days, with a birth certificate, but it’s a relatively new phenomenon. In fact, for much of American history, birth records were held by churches, assuming there were even records at all. During the mid-1800s, different states began making a concerted effort to record births. New York State, for example, began collection birth records in 1881. Some counties and municipalities across the state began doing it earlier. New York City began recording births as far back as 1847. Chemung County has records going back to 1875, although not at the Historical Society.

The U.S. Public Health Service has a standard form for registering births, although many states have their own as well. The forms are completed by the attendant at birth or a hospital administrator and forwarded to the state and local health departments. In Chemung County, birth certificates are issued and held by the Chemung County Vital Records office at 103 Washington Street in Elmira. Parents receive a free copy of their child’s birth certificate and additional ones can be ordered for a fee. Everyone should have a copy of their birth certificate. You will need one when applying for a passport, driver’s license, or non-driver’s ID. You can request historical birth certificates for genealogical purposes from the Chemung County Vital Records office as well. 

Form for attendants at birth, ca. 1910s

 

Executive Order 14156 was signed on January 20, 2025. It was immediately challenged by the attorneys general of 22 states (including New York) and multiple organizations. Although it was initially slated to go into effect on February 19, 2025, it may never go into effect at all if the courts find it unconstitutional.

 

Jury Duty

By Rachel Dworkin, archivist

This past week, I was summoned for jury duty. These days, a lot of Americans would prefer to avoid it, but, historically, people have fought hard for the right to sit on a jury.

These days in New York State, potential jurors are drawn from lists of registered voters, local property tax payers, licensed drivers, and persons applying for public assistance.  Once a pool of potential jurors has been summoned, the lawyers for both sides work together to select either six or 12 jurors (depending on the type of trial) and up to two alternates to hear the case. The attorneys interview potential jurors to select those which they think might be open to their case while excluding those they fear will not be. In an article entitled “How I Pick Out Men for a Jury” written for The American magazine in 1919, Elmira attorney John B. Stanchfield explained his process:

In selecting a jury, for example, the law plays practically no part. It is understanding of human beings that counts. For this reason, I study your face, your tone of voice, the answers you make and, especially, whether or not you look me in the eye when speaking. I make a point to find out whether you are well-to-do, or perhaps a clerk at a store. In addition, I always want to know the occupation of a prospective juror’s children, as well as the occupation of the juror himself. I ask your age, religion, and many other things because they all aid me, as the prosecutor or the lawyer for the defense, to make up my mind whether or not I want you for the jury.

Ideally, Stanchfield wrote, a jury should comprise of four strong men and eight intelligent and resolute ones. A juror who could empathize strongly with the defendant due to similarities in profession, class, religion, race, age, or club association, would be unlikely to convict, while someone from a different background might be more likely to return a guilty verdict. It was true back in 1919 and it is still true today. That’s a big part of why so many people have fought so hard to ensure that women and minorities can participate on juries.

John B. Stanchfield, attorney

 The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery and guaranteed citizenship and basic civil rights to African Americans. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 explicitly extended those rights to include participation on juries, among other things. In 1883, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was overturned by the Supreme Court, opening the door for states to find ways of excluding Blacks from jury participation. This was especially the case in the South. In 1935, the Supreme Court reversed course in Norris v. Alabama (1935), declaring that the State could not systematically exclude Blacks from jury service. Individual lawyers could continue to attempt to dismiss potential jurors based on race until Batson v. Kentucky (1985), when the court ruled that a State violates a defendant’s right to equal protection in a trial where members of their own race have been purposely excluded from the jury. Despite the ruling, the problem of racial exclusion persists.

In Chemung County, only two Blacks were summoned as prospective jurors between 1875 and 1900. Richard Johnson, a Black man living on East Clinton Street, was summoned for a case in January 1899. He worked as a laborer and had not been following the news of the case in the paper, despite living in the same neighborhood as the victim. Attorney John B. Stanchfield argued that he was unqualified to serve and had him dismissed. It was not until well after 1935 that a Black man was selected to sit on a jury in Chemung County. 

Chemung County courtroom, 1896

 Women were also long excluded from juries. In 1870, the Chief Justice of Wyoming Territory began the practice of mixed-gender juries, but his successor in 1871 terminated the practice. In 1883, Washington Territory granted women the right to serve on juries, but subsequently rescinded it in 1887. Utah became the first state, in 1898, to grant women the right to sit on juries. After New York women won the right to vote in 1917, a group of four women who had recently registered to vote became the first women to sit on a jury in this state in a case in Sidney in January 1918. The problem was, New York State law specified that only men could serve as jurors. It wasn’t until 1927, after repeated attempts to amend the law, that New York officially allowed for female jurors, but service for women did not become mandatory until 1930s.

In 1935, The Star-Gazette interviewed local women about their thoughts on compulsory jury duty for women. Dean Frances M. Burlingame of Elmira College was all in favor as she didn’t “see any essential difference between the citizenship of men and women” and therefore believed women should have the same duties as men. Others were somewhat less enthusiastic about the prospect of serving, but agreed it was important.  Mrs. George Diven, president of the Chemung County Republican Women’s Club, disapproved of the entire jury system, but did not say what she would replace it with.

Mississippi became the last state to make women eligible for jury duty in 1968. As late as 1979, some states continued to require women to opt-in to serve until the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. In 1994, the court ruled that a jury where members were excluded based on gender was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

I didn't end up on a jury this time, but I'm still glad I at least have the right to serve.

           

Death Rays: The Local X-Ray Murder Trial That Made International News

By Kelli Huggins, Education Coordinator

Earlier this year, I wrote a longer paper for the Empire State Library Network’s Researching the Empire State contest about a sensational local murder trial. I wanted to share some of the story on our blog. I first uncovered the Orme/Punzo murder trial when I was doing research on early forensic science for our Crime and Punishment exhibit. I was hooked by the story’s mix of science and scandal and had to know more.

On July 8, 1897, George A.C. Orme walked into the Horseheads home of his estranged wife, Susan Orme, and proceeded to shoot her and her alleged lover, James Punzo. Susan Orme was shot in the face and James Punzo in the back of the head. Both somehow survived the initial assault. Mrs. Orme escaped serious injury, but her ability to speak clearly was hindered by the wound. Punzo was rushed to the Arnot Ogdon Hospital, where he slipped in and out of consciousness as doctors prepped for emergency surgery.

George Orme was arrested and brought to the Chemung County Jail, where he waited while Punzo clung to life in the hospital. He somehow survived the surgery, but the doctors had been unable to locate and remove the bullet. Knowing that they couldn’t leave it in his brain, doctors decided to use the newly-discovered x-ray technology to find where the bullet had lodged. The team of physicians, led in part by Dr. Frank Ward Ross, anesthetized the patient and performed the x-ray, but the image produced was unclear. 

Skull x-ray from our Van Aken photograph collection. While not related to the trial, this image would have dated from around the same time. After x-rays were discovered in November 1895, word of the technology spread quickly. With rather minimal supplies, even amateur photographers could produce the powerful rays.

Punzo was miraculously still alive and talking in the wake of the procedure. But fearing they were running out of time, the physicians made another attempt at an x-ray on July 27. That again failed. They tried one last time, on July 31. The two exposures on July 31 lasted a combined 36 minutes. Those images again failed to show the bullet. After the final x-ray, Punzo’s health quickly declined and he died on August 10 or 11. But that was just the beginning of the scandal.

George Orme’s lawyer argued that it was the x-rays that had killed Punzo, not his client’s bullet. The trial proceeded with conflicting expert testimony; some physicians, like Ross, argued that the technology was completely safe and that it was the bullet and ensuing infection that caused Punzo’s death. Other physicians, like Dr. John Pitkin of Buffalo, claimed that the physicians had outdated technology and had been negligent. The curious public packed the Chemung County Courthouse to witness the testimony and courtroom demonstrations of the x-ray machine.

Illustrations from the trial as printed in the American X-Ray Journal in 1897 (available on Wikimedia Commons)

When the arguments were over, the jury took little time to return a verdict of not guilty. The press and x-ray experts attributed this to the jury’s confusion over the safety of the rays. Since there was doubt, they found Orme innocent.

The Orme case continued to spark international debate about x-rays and their use in legal proceedings. Both Drs. Ross and Pitkin continued to argue for their sides. But no matter the role that the x-rays played in Punzo’s death, the trial did open up dialog about the very real and devastating health effects that prolonged x-ray exposure had on the physicians and scientists who first experimented with the technology.