Cable Act

Before the act, an alien woman became a citizen when she married a citizen or when her husband naturalized, and from 1907 an American woman who married an alien lost her citizenship. From September 22, 1922 marriage did neither, except that until 1931 a woman still lost citizenship by marrying an alien racially ineligible to naturalize.

For research the date is a dividing line. A wife who arrived later needed papers of her own, and the 1930 census told enumerators so. If her husband was already a citizen she could file a petition without a declaration. Women who had lost citizenship by marriage could regain it, and from 1940 all of them could repatriate.