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Roswell's Other Aliens

by Michael Taylor on 2017-02-10T08:39:00-07:00 in American Studies, CSWR, Southwest Studies & New Mexico | 1 Comment

If you visit the UFO Museum in Roswell, New Mexico, you'll learn a lot about aliens from outer space but nothing at all about the kinds of aliens the city, along with many others across the state, came to fear during the "War to End All Wars." To do that, you’ll have to visit UNM's Center for Southwest Research, where a collection of archival documents sheds light on the long, painful history of controlling America's borders.

Dating from 1888 to 1950, the U. S. Marshal's Records for New Mexico cover a wide range of topics, including World War I, when tensions over ethnic profiling ran even higher than they do today. The documents reveal that what Mexicans and Muslims are experiencing in 2017 bears some similarity to what other "hyphenated Americans" went through exactly 100 years ago.

Up to that time, the United States, facing a labor shortage, had welcomed migrant workers. Many stayed for the rest of their lives without ever applying for citizenship. In 1917, however, when the nation went to war with Germany and its allies, Americans had to figure out what to do with the roughly 500,000 unnaturalized Germans who were living all across the country.

Although some had lived peaceably in the U.S. for more than fifty years, they were still technically subjects of a hostile foreign power. By December 1917, not only Germans but also Austro-Hungarians were required to register as "alien enemies" so the Department of Justice could keep an eye on them. All but a few, it turns out, were harmless. 

Registration affidavits for hundreds of unnaturalized Germans and Austrians residing in New Mexico during the First World War are preserved in the U.S. Marshal’s Records at UNM. Accompanied by small photographs and the fingerprints of each registrant, they are fascinating, intimate, and at times poignant records of mostly forgotten lives.

When the war broke out, Wilhelm Drantz, according to his form, had been farming for six years in New Mexico, probably to send money home to his wife and children in Stuttgart. Others, such as Tucumcari tailor Herman Domkiewicz, had lost contact with their families in the old country. Domkiewicz's form states that his son Viktor had been fighting in the German army. "Had a notice he was missing in June 1916, never heard anything more; suppose he is dead."

Some Germans had come to New Mexico in the U. S. Army, despite lacking citizenship papers. These included George Hapke, an army doctor at Fort Bayard, and Daniel Becker, a soldier at Camp Cody. Johannes Heinrich Walter Gruner came to teach at UNM, whereas in the case of student-turned-cowboy Valentine Karl, adventure seems to have been his main goal. A few came for a cure—registration affidavits for several tuberculosis patients are found in the U.S. Marshal's papers.

Among the many Jews in New Mexico who registered, twenty-two-year-old Isidor Haas stands out. Born in the British colony of Singapore to German parents, he was a prisoner of war in Japan and Australia in 1915-16 but somehow came to the United States. In 1917, he was working as a clerk in Bernalillo. 

Perhaps the most surprising "alien enemies" were Catholic missionaries. Julius Hartmann, a much-respected chaplain who became known as the Godfather of New Mexico, was required to register, along with scores of German nuns working in hospitals and orphanages. Many had male relatives fighting for the Central Powers. Sister Mary Hadriana of Roswell stated that two of her brothers had been killed in the war.

The Department of Justice kept track of as many alien women as men. Some were unmarried, including Elizabeth Reinartz, a schoolteacher in San Marcial (now a ghost town in Socorro County), and Getrude Schade, a housekeeper whose father had been born in Illinois but returned to the fatherland and was fighting for the Kaiser. It is not clear whether Clara Kozel, born at Neusellerhausen near Leipzig in 1871, came to New Mexico on her own, but in 1918, according to her registration form, she was living alone while her husband, Hans, served in the Austrian army.

Some aliens were not aliens at all, but had married unnaturalized German men and therefore had to register. Antonia Ludwig, for example, was born Antonia Atencio in Espanola in 1893, while Mary Jane Gottfried, née Parker, was a New Yorker whose father, Michael Parker, had been killed in the Civil War. Likewise, Louisiana natives Irma (Nason) Schoeffer and Julie (Brosset) Siedenburg had been made to feel like criminals merely because of the men they chose to love. Probably no one felt more indignant than Tohle Hushklishee, the Navajo bride of Bavarian-born Indian trader William Beck. As a Native American, she would have considered all Europeans, whether U.S. citizens or not, to be aliens and, now and then, enemies.

Learn more by exploring the United States Marshal (New Mexico) Records, 1888-1950, in the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections. Questions? Feel free to contact Michael Taylor, Public Services Librarian, at mtaylor6@unm.edu.  
 


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Posts: 1
Adrienne Warner 2017-02-10T11:34:36-07:00

Fascinating history and material!


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