Citizenship at 104

Our chapter on citizenship describes the importance of the concept and the ways by which Americans attain it, by birth or naturalization. A recent case in point comes from Oregon. Marion Pringle, age 104, recently had an unpleasant surprise when she tried to renew her driver's license. Oregon requires proof of citizenship, which she did not have. The Oregonian reports:

She was born in Vancouver, B.C., but her parents were U.S. citizens. Her father worked the railroads and died when Pringle was a girl, and her mother brought her and a brother to her mother's hometown, Portland. Another brother stayed in Vancouver.

Pringle never left the United States after that, so she never got a passport. She voted in Oregon elections and eventually collected Social Security. She renewed her driver's license religiously; she was driving until four years ago, and she said Tuesday that it was "terrible" to surrender her blue 1979 Volkswagen Beetle that she'd bought new.

Her niece, Darcie Buzzelle, came up with a solution.

She called the Oregon Historical Society, which discovered records from the 1920 Census showing Pringle, her mother and brother in Portland. She later found 1890 census records listing Pringle's father in his native Wisconsin.

Those records, Buzzelle said, proved that Pringle's parents were citizens, thus conferring citizenship on Pringle though she was born in Canada.

Marion Pringle turns 104