The U.S. Senate passed a resolution this week expressing regret for a law passed more than a century ago that stripped thousands of women of their U.S. citizenship for marrying foreigners. It is an obscure 1907 law. By 1922, Congress had acted to allow most American-born women who married foreigners to remain U.S. citizens. But those who married men ineligible for citizenship, such as Chinese immigrants, still forfeited their U.S. citizenship until the restriction was later repealed.

My grandmother, Helen Anderson, was one of these women. Did your grandmother lose her citizenship too?