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Gee, I thought I covered that once before..

So people walked around with their birth certificates, election registration, etc.?

But I digress. My original question was how did they tell illegal immigrants from legal immigrants? Since your definition of "jurisdiction" is based on that I was curious.

But I digress. My original question was how did they tell illegal immigrants from legal immigrants? Since your definition of "jurisdiction" is based on that I was curious.

I think restrictions on immigrations did not occur until the Page Act of 1875, and the Chinese exclusion act of 1882 Prior to that, there was no such thing as an "illegal" immigrant. There were no laws prohibiting immigration at that time.

People generally carried some form of identification with them. We were a mobile society, constantly moving west. ID was required to buy or sell land, write a will, open (or make a withdrawal from or close) a bank account, open up a line of credit at the general store.

Often, the instrument was a simple statement: Bearer is ________, from ___________ County, state of ____________, as attested by my seal and his mark below.

There appear to have been many variations on this theme. And when families moved, their various documents moved with them -- just as yours do today. Usually, upon settling in a new area, identity only needed to be established once.

Of course, a deed from a previous land sale or a birth certificate or marriage license would suffice. As a general rule, proof of ID only needed to be presented once. Presumably, the local law enforcement (a sheriff, e g.) would interest themselves in new arrivals and establish their bona fides.

Only strangers needed to ID themselves, of course. The process seems to have been more-or-less informal and doubtless far from perfect. But there were few "furriners" in our midst at the time, anyway.