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Griego: In this marvelous place, history holds out its hand

Published March 1, 2007 at midnight

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I spent a few hours this week amid the stacks of the National Archives regional office in Denver, and if it hadn't been for the peculiar shade of lime green paint, I might have sworn I had stumbled upon paradise. A particular kind of paradise, the heaven of history buffs and family sleuths, of people who love the fountain pen flourishes of long-ago handwriting and the crack of a leather-bound book when it is opened and the smell of old paper, which, despite the carefully maintained temperature and humidity, persists.

I wanted to look at an index of century-old citizenship records recently rescued from file cabinets at the immigration office in Denver. Archivists say there are close to 40,000 names of immigrants who became citizens in Colorado between 1876 and 1906, history revealed in thousands of index cards.

I meandered before I got the cards and I will meander here because places like the archives are meant to be delved into and marveled over. The cavernous storeroom holds much bureaucratic history from eight states in the region, but it also contains treasures like this letter from Montana territorial Gov. B.F. Potts to the Blackfoot Indian Nation dated July 1876, a month after Lakota chief Sitting Bull and his Indian allies defeated George Armstrong Custer at Little Big Horn.

"I would advise that you see your great chiefs at an early day and explain to them the Great Father is now very angry with the Sioux and he is sending his soldiers into the Sioux country to exterminate 'Sitting Bull' and all Indians who fight with him."

The immigration index cards are in good shape. The archivists have repacked them into acid-free boxes, and the plan is to make the information available online. From it, researchers will be able to learn where a new citizen filed his petition, and from the petition, when the person arrived, his occupation and the names of spouse and children.

The day I visit the archives, a couple of volunteers are lining the cards, one by one, beneath a mounted digital camera. They are now in the C's.

William Clemens; Lake County; Great Britain and Ireland; naturalized in 1898. Thomas Clement; Clear Creek; Great Britain; 1886. Liberato Clementi; Pueblo; Italy; 1904. Jacob Clementiz; Lake County; Austria; 1889. Martin Clements; Denver; Austria; 1894; age 27. John Clementz; Pueblo; Austria; 1901. Albert Clemo; Yuma; Canada; 1894.

Nearly all the new citizens are men, many living in mining country, many from England and Ireland and Canada. Others are from Italy, Holland, France, Germany, Sweden. If few women are represented during this time, I am told that it is in part because a husband's citizenship became his wife's as well, and that remained the case until 1922. These were the wide-open days of immigration when restrictions were few and a person who spoke English, who had lived in this country for at least five years and who swore he wasn't an anarchist or a polygamist (or, after 1882, Chinese) could become a citizen.

Curiosity leads me to the archive's petitions for naturalization - nearly all of them recorded after 1906. I find doctors, farmers, street car conductors, clerks, ranchmen, butchers and clerks among the pages. A 1918-1919 binder from Pueblo is full of Italians and Eastern Europeans who describe their occupations as steelworker, crane man, coal chute worker, boiler washer, cement finisher, bricklayer, iron molder. Some who could not write signed their names with an X.

The volunteers continue moving through the C's: Alma Cling of Sweden; Annie Clinton of Ireland; Bee Agnes Clinton of Ireland; Hans Clooson of Denmark; August Clyncke of Belgium; Hupoliet Clyncke of Belgium. The last two became citizens within days of each other in November 1904. Their cards say they filed their papers in Boulder. From there it's a short hop to the phone book where I find R.W. Clyncke and Christopher Clyncke listed in Boulder.

"Yeah," 73-year-old Bob Clyncke tells me. "There were four boys and one girl that came over. My grandfather Andre was their brother.

"Hupoliet was my great-grandfather," Christopher Clyncke tells me.

Between the two and Bob's wife, Beverly, I learn that August was the oldest and he came first, maybe as early as 1863, and then came Hupoliet, and then the younger siblings. The brothers were miners and farmers and Hupoliet had 10 children, one of whom he named Hupoliet, who went by Poliet. When Poliet had a son he named him Hupoliet, too. Only he goes by Marvin. They're still in the concrete business that grandpa Hupoliet started, and they still live on part of the old homestead. And Bob Hupoliet, he's a farmer, just like his father and grandfather, and he lives and works 80 acres of the original farm his grandpa Andre homesteaded in 1905.

They tell me they have a photo of Hupoliet and his wife and kids and that they've been to Belgium and that if I run into any more Clynckes, chances are they're related. We get a kick out of the way history can reach forward into the present, the way a little bit of the past has been resurrected by an index card.