FamilySearch has done it again! I love looking through their collections. Do you have a New England ancestor who acquired citizenship somewhere in the six state area in 1906 or earlier? Then this collection – United States, New England Petitions for Naturalization (1791-1906) is for you. It is searchable by name.

Always on the hunt for more Carlisle family information, I entered just the surname in the search box. Only eighteen hits came up, which surprised me since that is not a particularly unusual surname and this database covers all of New England.

Five possibilities caught my eye: Abraham, Charles and Robert Carlisle and John and William Carlile, all born in Canada and naturalized in Maine. A look at the index card showed papers filed in Washington County, Maine for Abraham and Robert, Waldo County for John and William and Aroostook County for Charles. Washington County is my main area of interest, but Charles in Aroostook County is likely related because his record says he was born in Sussex, New Brunswick, the exact village where my Carlisles lived for many years.

This is just an index to the petitions. Next, I checked Maine, Washington County for naturalization records and found a link to more digitized records. There I found the record for Abraham Carlisle, who is a nephew of my two Carlisle 3x great grandmothers, Abigail and Catherine Carlisle.

Two Page Petition of Abraham Carlisle, 1847

Although the petition is handwritten, it is very readable so I won’t include a transcription. From it, I’ve gleaned some good information about the time the Carlisles came into Maine from New Brunswick, Canada. The family patriarch, Robert Carlisle, fought in the Royal Fencible Americans, based in Nova Scotia, during the Revolution. No Carlisles are in Washington County, Maine in 1820, but they are there in 1830. Robert died in 1834 in Charlotte, Maine and his widow returned to Sussex, New Brunswick, Canada, likely to live with relatives.

Abraham states in his petition that he was born in New Brunswick on 3 January 1814, so I now have his exact date of birth. He further states that he first lived in Baring, Maine (a town just north of Charlotte) for five years from the fall of 1822 and then removed to Charlotte, where he has since lived.

Abraham was only eight years old when he moved to Maine, so he was likely part of a family migration. I also didn’t know that the Carlisles had first lived in Baring because that happened in between censuses.

This search took me about five minutes and I know a bit more about the Carlisle family than I did before. It was well worth five minutes. Now, I need to go back to that index and look up the other Carlisle men!